


Winterhawk & Kisses

by Nny



Series: Winterhawk Kisses [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-05-19 20:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 150
Words: 52,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14880800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: A continuing collection of kisses originally posted (and prompted) on the winterhawkkisses tumblr blog.





	1. Chapter 1

[Scenes from a rescue]

“Hey.” 

There’s water dripping somewhere in the dark dampness of the room. He’s been here for a hundred years, but this is the first time the drops have talked. 

“ _Hey.”_

Bucky opens his eyes on his second try, jerks his head backwards and almost knocks himself out again when he sees the shadowman in front of him. He strains - useless,  _useless_ , every damn time it’s useless - against the cuffs that hold him in place, and the shadowman bats at the air gently. 

“Bucky, hey, hey, it’s - er - me.”

“ _Mario_ ,” a tiny tinny voice says from inside the shadowman’s head, and the shadowman doesn’t scowl - can’t, with the black all over formless face - but he gives off an aura of  _pissed_. 

“Shut your mouth, Tony, or I’ll pinch out every hair in your stupid futzin’ beard,” the shadowman says, and then he pulls off his head. 

Bucky flinches, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to, to bone-white but it’s  _skin_ , it’s blue eyes, it’s pale hair, it’s not all the bone that’s left when the skin’s peeled free. 

“Steve?” he ventures, ‘cos lately his eyes haven’t been telling much truth, and the man’s mouth twists into a sort of a grin. 

“No,” he says, “but thanks.” 

 

*

 

“-n’t be seen to be helping him, which is why I’m in this roach motel and why I’m wearing this goddamn suit. I swear it never used to ride up this -  _shit_.” 

Blue eyes have corner-caught his reflection. Bucky considers playing dead, but he doesn’t have any knives. 

“Hey,” shadowman says, in his smooth soft shadowman voice, even if right now he’s disguised as a person. Bucky tries to scoot away but he’s kitten-weak and everything’s spinning and he shoulda had his shots by now but it’s been a while, it’s been a while. “Hey’re you hungry?” 

Bucky’s not sure, but his stomach seems pretty convinced. 

(Bucky’s stomach is a liar. Bucky won’t tolerate proximity and shadowman’s weirdly respectful of that, coming just close enough to drape a wet cloth over the back of his neck.)

 

*

 

The darkness jangles and everything hurts and Bucky whimpers and shakes and curls into the only warmth to be found, and he loves the warmth because the warmth curls back. 

 

*

 

It takes a few more hours to clear his system, leaves him washed up and trembling, flotsam and jetsam on a motel bed. 

There’re warm fingers gently stroking his hair into place and out of it again, calluses catching up individual strands. 

Everything’s fuzzy and warm and a little sick around the edges, like the good kinda hangover a tiny friend’ll agree to snuggle you through. Bucky doesn’t appear, right now, to be in immediate danger of death, so he pushes up just the barest bit so the fingers will curl around and stroke just behind his ear. 

 

*

 

“I was  _kidnapped_ ,” Bucky says, and Clint’s fork wavers a little in mid-air, just enough hesitation for Bucky to steal the last piece of bacon. 

“Ugh,” he says, “no fair,” and Bucky laughs at the expression on his face. 

(He’s not laughed so much in years.)

“I’m takin’ advantage until you stop fallin’ for it,” he says. 

“I’m not falling for anything,” Clint grumbles, but his eyes are averted, and there’s no way he’s telling the truth. 


	2. Chapter 2

The lowest effort blanket fort is the most effective, right now. 

It takes a bit of doing - cab to the corner of Quincy and Tompkins, angry cab driver escort to the nearest ATM, hobbling shuffle back from the gas station two blocks away, sideways duck down an alley, wait for the police to pick up the goddamn asshole who tries to take advantage of his weakened state… 

Eventually Clint makes it inside, anyway. The elevator’s out again, because the building manager Clint hired is a lazy asshole who somehow always sidesteps being fired by using pictures of his freaking adorable kids. Clint makes a call - they overcharge, but they’re  _fast_  - and starts hauling himself slowly up the stairs. Sure, the doctor said crutches, but the doctors always say a lot of things that Clint ignores. He doesn’t wanna start listening now and set some kinda precedent. 

He’s sweating hard by the time he makes it up to the top floor, the cold kind, gross and clammy. His shirt is sticking to his skin so he carefully shimmies it off - his right arm isn’t working quite right to haul it off as usual, goddamn dumpsters, being all  _solid -_ and then contemplates the stairs up to his bedroom and bathroom with a sense of despair. 

It’s like - getting home should be  _it_. Especially when it was a pain in the ass to get here, especially when Clint’s hurting and tired and - there shouldn’t be more effort required, dammit. He casts a glance at the couch, that tempting minx, and then takes a deep breath and takes a hold of the rail. 

“Look at you.” 

Clint startles, stiffens, slumps. Practically one motion. 

“I know,” he says, and keeps the groan that’s been wanting out since the street corner a block away between his teeth. The stair rail protests a little at taking practically his whole weight; so does his left arm. “Pathetic, right?” 

“You gonna let me carry you?” 

“Do I ever?” 

Clint turns to watch his reaction to that, ‘cos Bucky - who still doesn’t have a key, so far as Clint knows, and yet somehow always manages to turn up here anyway - does this gorgeous clenching thing with his jaw when Clint’s frustrating. Which is pretty much always. 

“I hate watching you hurt yourself,” Bucky says, and Clint snorts out a laugh that hurts his ribs. 

“That’s basically my entire life,” he says, and the hiss as he takes another step cannot be goddamn suppressed. “You picked the wrong guy if you wanna -” 

“Quit it,” Bucky snaps, and he marches over and up to the second step, where Clint relents enough to let Bucky take his elbow and brace him up another step. “Quit tryin’ to talk me out of this.” 

That’s - not exactly what Clint is doing. More… offering a reality check, so they can both accept it easily when Bucky makes the only sensible choice. 

“Like I can talk you out of anything,” he grumbles, leaning more firmly into Bucky’s side as they climb another step. “Most stubborn man on the goddamn -” 

“Says  _you.”_

Clint can’t lie, Bucky’s practically carrying him, at this point. When his knee gives out when they’re almost at the top, Bucky  _does_ , hauling him up the last couple steps awkwardly and dumping him onto his bed. 

“Stay,” he says, and Clint grumbles under his breath but honestly cannot bring himself to move. 

He’s face down against sheets that are cleaner than they should be, crumpled like discarded paper and smelling like Fresh Linen, which is a bit of a mind trip. How can it smell like the thing it is, if they have to put the scent in? Somewhere a window’s open, and the breeze dries the sweat in the small of his back; he’s still gross, but at least he’s not clammy - small victories. 

He shifts with the weight that comes down on the edge of his bed, pulled towards Bucky like magnets. Clint startles at the first touch of warm, wet cloth, and then finds himself melting as long, firm strokes clean the sweat from his back, businesslike and a little brusque and still more than he’d ever have expected. 

“Turn over,” Bucky says, and then helps to brace him as he flips over onto his back. Clint blinks up at the ceiling as Bucky starts up again, ‘cos when he looks at the guy’s face it’s harder to pretend this is anything other than it is. The Winter Soldier is one of the most dangerous guys on the planet, and he’s never looked more terrifying to Clint than when he freaking  _cares_. 

When he’s done, Bucky flings the washcloth directly into the sink from where he sits and unzips his jacket, peeling it off and dumping it over the side of the bed. He’d kicked off his boots somewhere downstairs, and he pulls off Clint’s jeans carefully before dispensing with his own and shuffling further onto the bed. He doesn’t make Clint move, just curls around him where he is, as he is, fits himself into the awkward-shaped space that is the only space Clint has. 

It shouldn’t be this comfortable, he shouldn’t fit this right. 

Clint lifts his hand and curls it around the back of Bucky’s neck, curls it into the hair there, tugs him a little closer and breathes out silently against his mouth because it’s the toughest thing in the world, to ask him to stay. 

“Quit tryin’ to talk yourself out of this,” Bucky says.


	3. Chapter 3

“I bet you do this with all the dames,” Steve says, half-laughing, and Bucky shoves him sideways before stilling obediently, little half-smile fixed firmly in place as the photographer fusses them into position. They can pick up their post-card in ten minutes so they walk along the front, standing politely aside until a GI has finishes taking a picture of his buddies with one of those portable cameras that Steve would do just about anything to have. 

“Weren’t you coming here with one?” Steve persists. “I thought you were meeting - Susan, was it? Or Joanne?” 

“Shut it, nosy parker,” Bucky says, “I don’t kiss and tell.” He’s awkward about it, though, no sign of the usual grin he gives when Steve asks about all his girlfriends, just a flush that’s coloring all the way to the top of his ears. “Whaddaya reckon?” He nudges Steve in the arm, a blatant distraction, and pointing at the lurid paintings that depict monsters, giants, and a lady with a better beard than Steve’ll ever be able to grow. 

“I’d rather go see that,” Steve says, pointing towards a sign that claims to point to ‘The Greatest Marksman On Earth.’ Bucky looks startled, then shakes his head and laughs down at the ground, something a little bare-bones about it, like the Cyclone’s towering skeleton against the sky. 

“Sure,” he says on a sigh. “Course you damned well would.” 

They pay their dimes and file into the tent, which is dominated by a long wooden stage. It lacks the glitz and glamor of other sideshows, presenting itself without comment, and Steve watches with interest as a young man - as blond as he is but far more solidly built, dressed in something more appropriate for the bathers on the beach - leaps athletically onto the stage. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announces himself, Southern vowels drawing out his words, “prepare to be amazed.” 

Someone jeers, over back of the crowd, and in one swift movement the man shrugs a bow off his back, pulls an arrow from the quiver that hung beside it, and fires an arrow that skims low over heads and pins a bowler hat to a tent-pole before anyone can even blink. 

There’s a moment of motionless silence, a swiftly stifled shriek, and then someone starts a wave of clapping that spreads across the crowd. The man on stage spreads his arms, bows neatly, and then proceeds to put on a show that blows Steve’s socks off. 

It’s not just the archery, although that’d be enough. He climbs and bends and jumps, finds improbable perches for impossible shots. He’s like something outta the movies, where they film it just so and it looks like a miracle when they’ve only just hidden the floor - except he’s  _real_. Steve gapes like a guppy all through, and can’t hold back his excitement once they leave. 

“ - and did you see when he -” 

“Yeah, Stevie, I saw,” Bucky tells him, long-suffering, a little fond. “It ain’t my first circus. You shoulda seen him Thursday, he snatched an apple outta some guy’s mouth and shot it out of the air.” 

“How many times you seen him, Buck?” Steve asks, curious, made even more so by the way a flush of color climbs Bucky’s cheeks. 

“I dunno,” he says, and won’t catch Steve’s eye. “Four? Five?” 

“That’s more than you see the girls you’re sweet on,” Steve says, laughing, and Bucky joins in after a second. After the barest second, barely noticeable, where his eyes widen and his fists clench and he looks like he’s been punched in the gut. 


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky felt like there was water in his ears, everything muffled and strange. More than that: he felt like he’d gone too deep and was drowning in front of all these nice people, and no one could even see.

They went to pick up their post-card and Bucky’s heart thumped loud and painful in his chest when he saw them like that together. It was perfectly innocent - Bucky sitting with a little smile on his face, Steve standing by his shoulder looking impatient that it was taking so long - but it felt somehow meaningful. He’d seen picture post-cards like this before, guys with their buddies, and he’d wondered -

Not that he and Steve were - not that it was like that. Steve was his brother and the most important person in his life, and regardless of whether Steve liked dames exclusively or not, whether he let his eyes stray to the way suspenders fell across broad shoulders and how asses look just as good under worn denim as they did under skirts, they were about as different as chalk and cheese. Stevie dreamed of meeting one girl that’d be everything to him, that he’d be everything to. Bucky dreamed of dropping to his knees in a back-alley somewhere and letting  _everything_  just disappear.

“Buck.” 

“Sorry, I -” he blinked himself back to the crowded streets of Coney Island. Steve was looking at him carefully, and Bucky wasn’t even sure if he’d picked up on what Bucky hadn’t been able to hide, that moment’s terror as the world fell away ‘cos Steve had made a joke when he’d looked too long. You could be as queer as a duck just so long as nobody caught on, and wasn’t that just like living in a hall of mirrors, caught sideways because you didn’t see yourself reflected right?

“I need some goddamn air,” Bucky decided, and shoved the picture into Stevie’s hands. “Go get us some water, would you? I’ll meet you by the freak show in a minute.” 

He didn’t wait for a response, just forged through the crowd and, when no one important seemed to be looking, between ramshackle buildings and stalls until he was away from the crowd, caught somewhere in a between-space of rickety wood and pegged canvas, where everything was lying about what it was and Bucky fit right in. He took a deep breath, blew it out through his mouth, and tried to find level ground again.

“You know you’re not supposed to be back here, right?” a voice said, slow and thoughtful, and it was with a sense of inevitability that Bucky turned to face the archer and - who gave a shit about firm foundations anyway - stumbled sideways into a slow suggestion of a grin.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Clint woke slow and easy, like surfacing after the deep gonging silence of bath water. Warm and relaxed and cradled. Safe. Home.

“You gonna just lie there grinnin’ at me?”

Still so soft, still so easy. “Sure,” he said, and smiled like no one was watching.

One thing constant fear of fuckin’ death did for you was remove the fear of anything else, so Clint could do this without even the slightest of butterflies. Stretch and smile and curl up for kisses, shameless.

Took him a while, a slow and warm and wet while, a swollen-lipped smiling while, to finally open his eyes to stubble, and satisfaction, and smiles.

“Good morning,” Bucky said.


	6. Chapter 6

“This is such a bad idea,” Clint said, stepping on the ends of his sweatpants ‘cos the string at the waist had gone again and they’d aged out of any elasticity they might once have had. 

“Seriously,” he said, trailing Bucky to the front door of his apartment, having mixed feelings about the way Bucky could avoid the carelessly tossed aside shoes without even looking down. 

“You know this is gonna be a nightmare,” he picked up again, without even hesitating, when Bucky reappeared at the top of the stairs. He reached for one of the boxes and Bucky handed it over without pausing. Clint stared down at the sharpied ‘kitchen’ and felt something like despair. “You’re the kind of person who knows where things go,” he said, helpless. 

Bucky headed straight for the staircase, taking the steps two at a time and disappearing into the bedroom. 

“Pretty sure there’s no storage space in there,” Clint called. 

“You’re gonna kill me in a week,” he told Bucky’s back, as he disappeared out the front door again. 

“Pretty sure you’re gonna hate me by this time tomorrow,” he said to Bucky’s front, hidden behind boxes or no. These ones got deposited under the stairs, and Bucky pushed his hair away from his face and flapped the front of his shirt some. Clint grabbed him a bottle of soda and tossed it across the room. 

“I’m just - fairly convinced that you’re gonna leave me five minutes after you see the wreck I manage to be,” he said, and Bucky rolled his eyes and came over to him, cupping his jaw and placing the world’s most patronising kiss on his forehead. 

“It’s a real shame nobody asked for your opinion,” he said. 


	7. Chapter 7

“Here, let me.” 

Clint watched him with a lazy grin, his arm behind his head and his other hand low on his stomach, passive and lax with sleep and satisfaction. Bucky focused on his task, wiping the skin of his belly and his fingers, and the kiss he pressed against newly-clean skin was more nerve-wracking than asking had been in the first place. 

Clint’s fingers threaded into his hair and held him there, thumb smoothing across his eyebrow. Bucky felt pinned, splayed open, and he closed his eyes and leaned into Clint’s touch because there was nothing he could do right now that wouldn’t reveal everything. It felt easier if he wasn’t watching. 

“Aw, Buck,” Clint said, low and a little hoarse from the noises he’d been making, and he tugged a little; more a suggestion than anything, but Bucky followed willingly, allowed himself to be directed. Clint’s mouth was soft against his, undemanding, gently reassuring. It was about as far away from how this evening had started as it was possible to get. 

That had been stumbling, harsh breathing, harsher mouths; it had been misplaced anger and need and compulsion; it hadn’t felt like a choice. It had been impossibly satisfying, the greatest goddamn rush to see the beautiful tension of Clint’s face as Bucky made him come, and he hadn’t quite expected the rush of tenderness and the tugging need to make him  _stay_. 

Clint’s callused hand was gently persuasive, pulling him closer and down. Bucky settled his head against Clint’s chest with unfamiliar familiarity, feeling unsettlingly settled; he observed the impossible screaming anxiety that’d settled in the hollow of his chest with a sense of detached calm. He didn’t know how to fix this moment in place, how to ensure that this continued. Didn’t know how to ask him to spend the night. 

“I should -” he said, half-hearted. 

“Here, let me,” Clint said, and reached to turn out the light. 


	8. Chapter 8

The tray slid into the oven and Bucky pushed the door shut, flicking the hair that’d been disturbed by the warm air back out of his face. He cranked the egg-shaped kitchen timer and tossed the potholders that Clint insisted on onto the counter. 

“Okay, where’s the -  _Clint_.” 

Clint grinned around the finger he had shoved into his mouth, hugging the bowl to his chest. 

“You really thought I was gonna stick to -  _no!”_

Clint vaulted over the kitchen counter, bowl still cradled in the crook of his arm, and the sound of his cackling never failed to make Bucky grin. 

“We made a  _deal,”_ he said, and Clint spun around to grin at him, backing away at a speed exactly matched to Bucky’s advance. 

“You snooze, you lose,” Clint taunted, and yelped and back-pedalled when Bucky lunged for him, slamming the back of his leg into the coffee table and windmilling for balance. Bucky grabbed the bowl and poked one finger against Clint’s sternum, just enough to entirely disrupt his fragile balance and send him crashing to the floor. 

“Ha,” Bucky crowed, and took a generous finger-full of the left over batter, distracted by the sweetness enough that he didn’t react fast enough to the hand hooked around his ankle, the swift sharp tug that had him on his ass. 

Clint smacked the bottom of the bowl and then snatched it out of the air, giving up on any kinda dignity and just licking straight at the rim. It left a sticky mess just at the side of his mouth and Bucky leaned in and licked it away, grinning stupidly as Clint turned his head into a messy chocolate-flavoured kiss. 


	9. Chapter 9

“ - wore it best.” 

Clint almost immediately regretted turning his aids back up. They’d been bickering about the skill level of sniping versus shield flinging earlier, ‘cos they were brothers-in-arms and competitive to a fault. He knew that tone in Bucky’s voice, and while things often worked out well for him when Bucky got all riled up, that didn’t mean he had to listen to the endless disputes. 

“Let’s take a vote,” Steve said, and he was using his Captain America voice, democracy and standing up for the little guy and patriotic duty, which was a pretty good sign that he wanted to win. 

“Tony?” Bucky said. “Who wore the cap suit better, me or him?” 

“Bucky,” Tony said seriously, “you’re beautiful, I would kill to see you in a tux, but that thing is basically his soul in clothing form. Sorry.” 

Steve made a tiny triumphant noise. Bucky scowled. 

“Bruce?” Steve asked, and Bruce held up his hands. 

“I have no opinion on anything,” he said, “I am forever Switzerland.” 

“Natasha,” Bucky said, with the air of someone who sees their salvation. “Come on.” 

“Sorry, Steve,” she said, and high-fived a metal hand without flinching. “I’m with James.” 

“Clint?” Steve said, pleading with a little hint of guilt-trip sprinkled like Cheeto dust over the top. 

Clint shrugged. “I love him, I can’t exactly be unbiased here.” 

There was a weird moment of pin-drop silence, and Clint looked up from the magazine he’d been flicking through, confused by the look of shock on Bucky’s face. 


	10. Chapter 10

Of course the best possible response to ‘I love you’ - or its closest equivalent - is for subject of said love to look stricken, turn a little green, and book it out of the room like his ass was on fire. Clint looked around at the assembled faces - Tony amused, Steve concerned, Bruce confused and Natasha clearly unsure where to begin with the mocking - and shrugged. “Sam wore it better,” he said, and ambled in the direction Bucky’d gone. 

There were no prizes for guessing where he’d gone. He’d been underground so long that all he ever wanted was sky. 

Clint had kinda expected a heap of slumped assassin, some kinda existential crisis, not the pacing anger he found. 

“What the hell was that?” Bucky asked. 

“What the hell was what?” Clint asked, genuinely kinda confused now. 

“I’m not a  _joke_ ,” Bucky half-yelled, and Clint reared back a little, actually kinda hurt that Bucky’d think Clint’d treat him like that. 

“I know that,” he said, “I wouldn’t ever -”

“So what was that ‘I love him’ shit?” 

“I’ve been doing it for ages,” Clint snapped back, defensive. 

“Doing what?”

“Loving you!” 

Bucky stopped pacing and stared at him, uncomfortably penetrating, and Clint stood there feeling a little like an idiot, ‘cos maybe this wasn’t what he thought it was at all. 

“The hell does that mean?” Bucky asked, and at least this time his voice was curious, not challenging, not angry in the way that made Clint want to flee or  _fight_. Clint spread his hands, not sure exactly what to say.

“I get up before midday for you,” he eventually settled on. “I saved coffee for you. I deleted old Dog Cops for the Twilight Zone, the hell did you  _think_  it meant?” 

“You never said.” He wasn’t smiling, not yet, but it was there around the edges, like the half-light before the dawn. 

“Love is a doing word,” Clint said. 


	11. Chapter 11

Footsteps clang down the staircase overhead and Bucky ignores them, focused on pulling and counting and the trickle of sweat he can feel running down his spine. Focus yourself in the physical enough and the dreams fade away, chased off by exhaustion and the honest burn of muscles used for nothing bad. 

A corner of blanket falls through the gap between steps and drags away, and then Clint’s rounding the corner and yawning up at him, blanket draped around him like some kinda robe. 

“Okay, enough,” Clint says, and Bucky considers that for a moment before conceding, uncurling hands that’re reluctant to let go and dropping to his feet. Clint walks straight forward into him, regardless of sweat, presses his face to the crook of Bucky’s neck and breathes him in like he’s still sleeping, heavy and slow. Bucky lifts his hand to rest heavy on Clint’s head, thumbing through sleep-tangled hair, and Clint nuzzles in unselfconsciously. 

“Mulan?” Bucky says and Clint makes a low affirmative noise, shuffling at his heels and staying within touching distance as Bucky sets it up, grabbing all the throw-pillows and piling them with one hand while the other keeps his blanket safe around his shoulders. Bucky throws himself into the pile when Clint is done, turns onto his side so Clint can curl up in front of him, drape the blanket over them both and let the bright Disney colors chase away the dark. 


	12. Chapter 12

Bucky crept into the bedroom, and it was a little awful how small he could make himself, how sheepish he looked. 

“Did I do somethin’ wrong?” he said, and Clint laughed wetly and scrubbed his forearm across his eyes. 

“No, Buck, I -” 

“Tony said it was a good place,” Bucky said, “but we don’t have to - I mean, you know I’m good just stayin’ in with you, we don’t have to -” 

“I love you,” Clint said, and Bucky’s slow delighted smile was everything, even in the half-light of angst-curtains. 

“Me too,” Bucky answered readily, “so why the hell are you in here cryin’ about it?” 

What do you say to that? Clint hates articulating this shit. How do you say ‘’cos I didn’t think I was worth that’ without sounding like you’re fishing for sympathy? All Bucky’d done was book a damned restaurant, spent a little time planning the time they’d spend together. 

“Thanks,” Clint said instead, a little thick and smeary, and he sniffed and rubbed his hands across his face. Bucky dropped heavily onto the bed next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, squeezing him a little, tactfully looking away from his face. 

“Thank fuck I didn’t buy you flowers,” he said.


	13. Chapter 13

Clinton Francis Barton is the goddamn baby whisperer. 

Bucky’s got ‘em when they’re upright and walking and able to interact, he’s willing to be a climbing frame and he’s delighted to impress ‘em with stunts and gross ‘em out with what he’ll eat, he’s good with band-aids and soothing words, he’s the most unbearable sort of supportive soccer dad. 

Clint’s kinda oddly awkward with them. They like him well enough, sure, but while he clearly adores them he can’t seem to relax. He pats them on the head and makes sure they have enough toys and backs away like he’s not quite sure what a childhood is or how it works. 

Babies, though, they kinda freak Bucky out. They’re small and helpless and you’re never sure if you’re doing things right. They’re  _breakable,_ and it’s not like Bucky’s history has allowed him to ignore that  _everyone_  is, but he’s wary. 

Clint, he spent ten minutes snapping and unsnapping a tiny Captain America onesie because of the laughs it elicited. Clint can complete impossible tasks one handed and cradling. Clint is asleep on the couch with a tiny curly-haired child drooling onto his shoulder looking like the definition of solid and safe. 

Bucky’s starting to wonder if they can maybe graduate from babysitting and look at acquiring a couple of their own. 


	14. Chapter 14

“You can’t keep doing this,” Bucky said, without any sort of hope that he’d be listened to. Clint just grinned, skin a little too tight over his skull, and scraped the rest of his food onto Bucky’s tray. “Clint -”

“Bucky,” Clint said, mocking his concerned tone. “Super soldier. You’re the one who’s gonna kick their asses when we get out of here, remember. I can deal.” 

He’d kept the dessert out of his ancient MRE, the only thing they ever bothered to bring them. He always kept the dessert. He nibbled on the edge of the chalky fudge brownie, hand cupped carefully underneath to catch the ashy crumbs, and a genuine smile settled onto his face as he tipped his head back against the wall. 

It was stupid, and inappropriate, and badly timed, how beautiful Bucky found him in those moments. It always kinda knocked you sideways, with Clint, ‘cos he was such an asshole and such a mess, and then he smiled or fired an impossible shot or gave you what few rations were available and you couldn’t help falling stupid in love.

“Get over here,” Bucky said, the slow knitting of his shattered leg best left undisturbed. Clint had given up on pride maybe one week in, and these days he was always cold; he scooted over and plastered himself against Bucky’s side without the slightest hesitation. Bucky wrapped an arm around him, squeezed him in tight. 

“I’m gonna take you out for a steak dinner when we get outta here,” Bucky said, “and you can have all the dessert you want.” 

“Why soldier,” Clint said, fake coy, head ducked down so Bucky couldn’t get even a glimpse of his face, “are you askin’ me on a date?”

“Yes,” Bucky said, heavy with meaning, not an inch of hesitation, and he felt Clint startle against him. 


	15. Chapter 15

“ - also I don’t think -”

There was a loud bang, which wasn’t something Bucky ever reacted well to, and he had his gun out and his eyes narrowed before he registered Clint, holding onto the door handle and staring dolefully at the sign marked ‘pull’, the flush on his cheeks reddening a little more slowly than the spot on his forehead.

“Oh,” Bucky said, and heroically resisted the urge to snigger. “Aw, Clint.”

He tugged him closer without even thinking, one hand on each cheek, thumbs idly stroking back and forth as he examined the bump like Clint was Steve or something, like they did this.

He didn’t notice the way Clint was looking at him, his slightly parted mouth, the way the pupils of his eyes widened and darkened, how *close* they’d gotten until… suddenly, all of a sudden, all at once, he did.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

Clint was unwrapping a sandwich, poking through the wrappings like there was a bomb inside ready to go off. (Sam was hoping there wasn’t a bomb ready to go off, literally or metaphorically, ‘cos Banner was up from the labs today and the guy had a  _temper_. 

Eventually he extracted a slip of paper and placed it carefully on the desk as he munched on his sandwich - tuna mayonnaise, cucumber, red onion, that was an  _effort_  sandwich, and Clint didn’t look like the  _effort_  type. 

“Your honey make you lunch?” Sam asked, and Clint choked on a piece of cucumber. 

“Um,” he said, “I guess you could call him that?” 

“So what’s with the note?” Sam continued, curious beyond belief at the way Clint side-eyed it, wary as all hell. 

“He thinks he’s  _funny_ ,” Clint said. “Read it.” 

Sam picked up the note, which was written on the corner of a pizza menu, looked like, in almost-dried-out Sharpie. 

“’And I said hey,’” he read out, and Clint joined in dolefully, “‘what’s going on.’“

“The hell?” Sam asked, and Clint made a face. 

“Every goddamn day he earworms me.” He grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and carefully picked out a text on the screen that was spiderwebbed with cracks. Upside down, it looked like it said ‘u sick son of a bitch’. “And then he laughs his ass off at me when I come home whistling.”

“Aaw, c’mon,” Sam said, “how the hell hard can it be to resist?” 

By end of day every poor bastard in the precinct was singing. 


	17. Chapter 17

Bucky calls Clint a multitude of names. Darlin’ and sugar and sweetheart and doll, baby sometimes when they’re alone, or they’ve found something that’ll get him drunk. He’ll call him asshole and shithead and fucker when he’s pissed because of the danger Clint’s found himself in; Barton when Clint’s done it to himself. 

Francis is the worst. Francis, drawled out and whining, when Bucky’s found something to be pissed about but he’s not quite ready to talk about what, sheathed dagger looks and mantrap comments. 

Clint seems to go exclusively for name-based nicknames. Buck and Bucky and Buckster and Barnes, nothing apparent to differentiate when they’re used. He flushes bright red when he’s asked if he has something fonder to call him - by Tony, who else? - and denies it vigorously. 

They catch him after a mission, one time, when he’s been holed up on the couch watching their fight on the TV. When he’s hauled himself up to the landing pad on crutches, pale and determined and with his toes turning blue ‘cos a sock won’t fit over the cast. He hobbles straight for Bucky and wraps him - old blood and smell of cordite and all - into an impossibly tight hug, chooses the shoulder by the ear with the comm in it to whisper his welcome home. 

“So fuckin’ glad you’re back, love,” he says, and no one has the heart to mock him for it at all.

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

The Barton-Barnes household is a place that is absurdly full of socks. If you spent the time, sorted ‘em out, it’s possible you could find a couple matching pairs somewhere, but Bucky refuses to let Clint ball ‘em up together like that because it ruins the elastic. 

Bucky also knows how to darn, to the point where some socks are honestly more fixing than sock. It feels apt. 

It’s become kind of a Thing, actually, and now they have socks (of varied lumpiness) knitted by Wanda and Vision and Grammy Wilson, socks made of cashmere and some kinda rabbit wool, socks of every color and pattern under the sun. There’s a set of drawers under the staircase that’s full of ‘em, and for a house where three stains is generally minimum for laundry, there’re a lot of baskets for it. 

Neither of them much likes the cold. 

It’s context, though. It’s the inescapability. Winter is a goddamn hellscape, and old clanking radiators do double duty and hurt a little to touch. 

Summer, though, Bucky comes up close behind Clint - who is shirtless, ‘cos he’s a menace - and presses his face against the freckles on his shoulders, curls his ice-bathed arm across Clint’s abs and can’t stop grinnin’ at the shriek. 


	19. Chapter 19

The trouble started - as so much trouble did - with Katie-Kate and her puppy dog eyes. Clint had arrived perfectly innocently, dressed in a tux ‘cos she’d said that was the dress-code, and somehow hadn’t twigged to the crazy until he was already halfway bought. 

“Wait,” he said, unheard against the hubbub and the forest of hands. 

He was, at least, second most expensive buy of the night, and the money was, at least, going to support orphans and service dogs. When his purchaser eventually found him, Clint was sitting in a pen of adorable pre-service puppies and miserably contemplating his fate. 

“And this is Clint,” Katie said, in that voice she used for talking to rich people, the one where it was pretty clear to Clint at least that she was laughing at them on the inside. 

“Yeah,” his purchaser said. “I know.” 

Clint looked up, confused, tracked up tight-fitted jeans, washed-thin shirt, leather jacket, and reached the long brown hair with an internal curse. 

“Hey Bucky,” he said. His nearest escape. His biggest goddamn regret. 

See, okay, he’d thought serial killer. 

Clint’d been drunk and not particularly helpful in the brains department. He’d been drunk and sad and alone, and he’d scoffed at a game of pool, and he’d been unable to resist a challenge to do better. He’d won, too, ‘cos Clint pretty much always won anything with angles, and - with a transition he’d never been quite sure of - he’d been pressed up against an alley wall with a tongue in his mouth. 

 _Go, drunk me!_  he’d thought, he’d had the clarity to think, ‘cos Bucky was a beautiful man and Clint’d trailed his hands across Bucky’s ass and around to his hips. 

“Hey,” he’d fumbled, “izzat a gun in your pocket, or you pleased to -”

Yeah. Gun. It’d been a gun. 

And okay, logically, law enforcement. Logically, soberly, that’d been most likely, but logically and soberly hadn’t come back home until his way too early wake up, until his headache had retreated enough for him to remember Bucky’s beautiful face. 

“So,” he said, catching a puppy around the chest and redirecting it away from his face, “I guess you found me.” 

“Guess I did,” Bucky said, and that tiny sideways grin was everything Clint had remembered and more. 

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a serial killer,” Clint said, “hell-bent on some kinda revenge.” 

Bucky’s smile widened into a movie star grin, and no way he’d be cast as the serial killer, he was hero material all the way through. 

“Feel free to pat me down,” he said, spreading his arms, welcoming Clint in. 


	20. Chapter 20

“This doesn’t mean I’m not interested,” Bucky said, phone pressed hard against his ear in the goddamn cacophony that was the ER. “It’s just not a good time for -” 

“No, yeah, I get it.” 

Clint didn’t get it, that was not the tone of a man who  _got it_ , that was the tone of a man who’d been frankly waiting to be let down, and had had all his suspicions confirmed. 

“No, you -” Bucky let out a long breath. So much for looking goddamn suave. “I’m in the ER,” he said. “I cut my hand open on a can of goddamn cat food, I’ve gotta get it stitched up.” 

“Oh,” Clint said. “Holy shit. Um. Which emergency room?”

“Woodhull Medical Centre, why?” Bucky frowned. “Clint, we can rearrange for another time, you don’t have to -” but he was talking to a dead line. He sighed and hung up, and if his mouth was quirking at the corner - ‘cos Clint was kind of a horrific mess, but he could on occasion be the sweetest guy Bucky had ever met - no one was gonna care. 

“Sir!” The nurse’s voice was sharp, annoyed, distant but coming closer, “sir, you can’t -” 

“Can.” The stubborn voice was familiar, and Bucky raised his head. “Also, will.” 

And there, strolling into the ER from the direction of the wards, was Clint Barton, dressed all fancy and covered in blood, holding a patch of gauze to his head. He looked around and positively  _beamed_  when he saw Bucky, coming over despite the nurse’s protests to sprawl into the plastic chair next to him. 

“Clint, what the hell -”

Clint shrugged. “Hit my head, so it must be Thursday.” 

“It’s Friday,” Bucky said, wary, and Clint grinned wide and dumb. 

“No, I know that, I was just -” he waved a hand vaguely. “Rhetorical effect.” 

“Okay,” Bucky said, “now I know you’re injured. You usually hide the smart  _way_  better.” A thought struck him, and he shifted his chair to face Clint more fully, carefully keeping the hand towel pressed to his palm. “Wait,” he said, “you didn’t call. You were gonna come anyway, even with -” he gestured to Clint’s head, the blood. 

“No need to thank -”

“You  _idiot_ ,” Bucky hissed, and Clint looked kinda hurt, but he kept going in any case. “What the hell kinda person d’you think I am that I’d want you to prioritise -” 

“You’re great,” Clint interrupted. Bucky fell silent, and Clint looked a little uncomfortable, like that hadn’t exactly been what he’d planned for. “You’re all kinds of amazing and I’ve been waiting for you to realise you can do better and I didn’t want to hurry that process any.” 

“You’re an idiot.” The nurse was standing over them, arms crossed, from the look on her face seriously considering calling security over to hustle Clint back into his room. 

“Thanks, Claire,” Clint said meanly. 

“Nah, she’s right,” Bucky said, and Clint visibly deflated. Bucky sighed. “Who the hell,” he asked, nudging Clint in the side for lack of a free hand to tangle with his, “could turn down all this?” 


	21. Chapter 21

“ - accidentally put a fork in the oven, you know what you got? A  _hot goddamn fork_.” Bucky made an angry gesture that somehow encompassed his disdain for the twentieth century and  _goddamn microwaves_  in particular, his face still blistered red from where he’d grabbed the thing and flung it through Clint’s window and onto the fire escape before he doused it in extinguishing foam. 

Clint loved him. 

He had loved him, he had been carrying that love tucked into the centre of his chest for a little while now, hoarded safer and more important than any other thing he owned. He’d been a little afraid to say it in the way that you feared losing the thread of a story half-way told, like looking at it too closely would make it vanish, somehow. Would risk its losing. 

No way he was losing this. Not this sudden heavy body-blow of a feeling, not this tender impossibility that’d outgrown his chest and spread through all of him, expanding beyond the confines of anything he’d thought it could be. 

It was possible his metaphors were a little influenced by the grotesque dripping foam-mountain where the microwave used to be. 

“ - not buying you another goddamn microwave,” Bucky concluded, backed up by the nearing shriek of sirens. 

“Don’t care, I love you,” Clint said. 


	22. Chapter 22

Clint woke up, couldn’t breathe in the darkness for an endless moment until his stubborn lungs remembered how the hell to draw in air. He choked on it, sat up straight from it, bent over his knees and breathed out hard. 

“I had a nightmare about you,” said a voice in the darkness, and Clint yelped and flailed and almost fell off the bed reaching desperately for the light. 

“Fuck,” he said, “fucking shit, Barnes, what the -”

“I had a nightmare about you,” he said again, from the corner of the room, knees raised and arms crossed on them, knives clenched in each fist. The warm glow of lamplight didn’t suit him. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” 

Clint coughed out a laugh, so fragile that it cracked in the middle. 

“You do this to everyone you dream about?” 

“I don’t know,” Barnes said, “I only just remembered how to dream.” 

Man, Barnes was a mine, deep and dark and mysterious with a seam of shitty stories that never seemed to play out. Clint collapsed back onto his back and stared up at the ceiling and the spider that was making itself a home there. Clint’d told FRIDAY to make sure they let it be. 

“So how come you’re dreaming about me?” he asked, and there was the gentle shift of cloth that sounded shrug-like, although he couldn’t find it in him to sit up and check. 

“Because you’re nothing special,” Barnes said, and Clint laughed again, ‘cos that was the standard response when processing was too complex. 

“Thanks,” he said, and there was that shift of fabric again. 

“I dreamed you died,” Barnes said. 

Clint rolled over onto his side, halfway facing him, the line of concentration behind his brows. 

“I don’t want that,” Barnes said, in the scared-decisive way he’d learned to express preferences - I  _do_  like pretzels, I  _don’t_  like elevators, I  _do_ want to sleep in a room with a light. 

“That’s good, I guess,” Clint said, and Barnes frowned in his direction this time, looking distant and tired and a little lost. 

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said, slow, puzzling through his feelings like a code to which he only half-remembered the key. “I  _wanted_  to make sure you’re okay.” 


	23. Chapter 23

It has honestly been painful to watch. 

Sometimes she wants to hit him around the back of the head. Of course, it’s Clint, so it’s not exactly an uncommon impulse, but it’s harder to resist than usual. 

Clint is an idiot. He is, without question,  _her_  idiot, and sometimes he can be very clever right alongside it, but it’s like idiot is a color filter that sits between Clint and the world. Even the clever and the selfless and the heroic - all of which are undeniable and intrinsic - are shaded with idiot before they’re revealed and experienced. 

And sometimes the filter is like Instagram, changing the perception but not getting in the way; other times the filter is old school, saran-wrap and Sharpie, providing a literal barrier between  _Clint_  and  _things that are good_. 

It has honestly been painful to watch. 

Natasha sometimes feels as though she needs to duck the ricochets, when someone attempts to flirt. With James, it’s like living in a war zone. 

He has asked Clint for coffee. He has asked Clint out for dinner. He has complimented his eyes and his smile and his arms and his sense of humor - which shows that love is a form of stupidity all its own - and Clint has sidestepped and laughed off and missed and ignored all of it. 

Which would be fine, if Clint weren’t so very desperately gone on James in turn. 

Clint let him switch the channel from Dog Cops. Clint made him coffee and didn’t absentmindedly drink more than half. Clint let James use his  _bow_ , which is an honor even Natasha cannot claim, yet when she challenged him about it he refused to act on it because of his claim that James wouldn’t want him that way. 

You could sharpen with an axe on his head. 

It had put Natasha into the uncomfortable position of having to talk about  _feelings_ , which is not something she will easily forgive. James had looked - dazed, a little afraid - as all conversations with her should end - and newly determined, and now he is leaning against the counter where Clint makes coffee, something about his posture seeming as immovable as a mountain. 

“Clint,” he says, “I’m flirting with you.” 

Clint freezes for a moment - his expression only, he can and has made coffee in his sleep, but it is enough to count. 

“Okay,” he says, “how much is the pot?” 

Natasha almost swears, almost makes up her mind to intervene, but James reaches out to touch his side, gently coax Clint in front of him so he can make eye contact. 

“Clint,” he says. 

Clint ducks his head and James sets a crooked finger under his chin, tilting it back up again and smiling with a softness that Natasha hadn’t thought was left. 

“Clint,” he repeats, with all the implacable gentleness of water, over time, wearing through stone. “I’m flirting with you. I’ve  _been_ flirting with you.” 

“But  _why?”_ says Clint, all wide-eyed and idiot-colored, and James sets to answering that and Natasha decides that valor requires discretion, right now, and leaves them in the silence of their softly touching mouths. 


	24. Chapter 24

“Hey,” Tony called, because he was a big enough man to admit that he occasionally remembered that people existed and when he did, he tended to require an audience. “Hey, anyone ho-oly shit!”

Unfortunately the last part was muffled all to hell by a metal glove - no, hand, so at least it wasn’t another of his creations gone wrong. The winter soldier was so much more comforting.

“Shh,” soft in his ear.

Tony obligingly lowered his voice. “Are we under attack?”

“No,” equally low, though a word as soft as murmur really oughtn’t to suit.

“Then what the hell, Barnes?” He hissed. He was released, at that, and when Barnes let him go and eased around in front of him, he was looking a little shame-faced.

“Sorry,” he said, which was a new and interesting development. “Clint’s asleep.”

Tony had absolutely noticed that bird-brain had been looking a little tired of late, had registered the concerned looks shot his way by Ms Romanoff and Terminator. He’d replaced his mattress, actually, spent a couple hours trawling the internet, made an ambient mix of New York night time sounds to fill Clint’s quarters ‘cos he’d once made a comment about it helping him sleep.

“I’m liking the guard dog thing,” Tony said, “it’s all kinds of adorable.” Barnes gave him the finger, watched grumpily as Tony removed his shoes, and then wandered into the living room.

Tony followed at a distance, silent, and watched as Barnes hovered anxiously before carefully pulling the blanket Clint’s burritoed himself in a little away from his face and curling up in a chair with a book.

He could protest all he wanted, Tony wasn’t taking it back; adorable is as adorable does.


	25. Chapter 25

 Clint smiles slow and easy, his beer bottle resting on his thigh. 

“‘snot an obsession,” he says, “‘smore a kind of long term relationship.” 

“Huh.” Bucky’s feeling pretty mellow, too, Liho purring on his lap as he drains that last of his bottle. “That an exclusive relationship?”

Clint snorts, inelegant and beautiful, the lamplight picking out sparks of gold in his stubble. 

“Why, you interested?” 

“What if I am?” 

It’s been a while since Bucky’s been on the receiving end of a look like that, but his body’s not forgotten how this all works, and he ain’t subtle about how he shifts into it a little, like a touch, like they’re both already three steps further through this. Clint’s blue eyes darken, and he licks his lips. 

“Then I guess I’d say arrows’re my hetero lifemates, and the relationship is wide open.” 

Bucky grins, lets himself slide off the couch just for the look Clint gives him for the moment he’s on his knees. 

“Not in here,” he says. 

“I’m not gonna  _do_ anything to the damned tanks,” Clint says, offended, and smiles reflexively when Bucky laughs. 

“No, but do you want them  _watching?”_

 

*

 

Bucky’s not sure when Clint does it, he’d passed out pretty hard after what they got up to. But he receives an angry phone call two days after Nat’s return, detailing exactly what she’s going to do to him - apparently the tiny Namor and oversized grinning skull ruin the ambience of the tanks, which would be fine if Nat’s fish didn’t  _like_  them. 

Bucky’s not even going near that - Nat’s weird as hell, but she’s also the most dangerous person he knows - but he comes out of his bedroom and manages to look past the adorable that is Clint, sleep-rumpled and half-asleep, at  _home_ in a way Bucky hadn’t even known he’d wanted, and smacks him upside the head. 


	26. Chapter 26

“ _What the hell_ ,” Tony had asked once, “ _was there some kinda Hydra beauty salon?”_

Bucky had shrugged. Said something about keeping their weapons easy to clean.

It had made Clint want to hit something. Most of Bucky’s stories made Clint want to hit someone; occasionally that someone was Steve. 

Clint stroked gently through the hair on Bucky’s chest, loving the way it made him all soft and pliant, sleepy-eyed and trusting in a way that was a revelation. Like, if Clint had to write some kinda dictionary definition of love… 

Bucky lifted his metal hand and interlaced his fingers with Clint’s, pressing his hand down against his chest and nudging it a little sideways, which was a hint that Clint could get behind. 


	27. Chapter 27

“He’s not dead, Clint, I can see him. He is, in fact,  _right there.”_

Clint shrugged and leaned against the door frame, the kind of pose that made him look like a badass - with his arms, crossed over his chest, all of which made for a very impressive picture. At least, he looked like a badass for as long as he managed to keep his balance; on the odd occasion, it was hilarious. 

“I dunno what to tell you,” he said. “He’s fuckin’ dead, Jim.” 

Bucky, who looked amused at the whole situation, waved lazily at Tony from over Clint’s shoulder. 

“Look, it’s basic maintenance,” Tony said. “It’s not even gonna hurt, it’ll just put his arm out of commission for maybe an hour, probably less.”

“Not today, Satan,” Clint said, and stepped back. “Try booking an appointment next time.” 

“And that’ll make the very alive assassin a little less dead, huh?” Tony asked, exasperated. 

“Who can say.” Clint started pushing the door shut. “Whims of the fuckin’ universe.” 

Tony caught Bucky’s eye through the narrowing gap. 

“So what’d you die of?” he asked. 

“Sexual exhaustion,” Bucky said, with the least subtle wink in the history of winking. 

It was apparently the odd occasion. It was  _hilarious_. 


	28. Chapter 28

“You would’ve  _died_.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, “and odds are pretty fuckin’ good that I could  _survive_  that, you unbelievable asshole.” 

Clint looked broken open, lit by a flickering streetlight that had somehow escaped the devastation, spray from the broken hydrants dripping from his hair, running along the line of his jaw. 

“Yeah, and if you didn’t, who says I could?” 

He only maintained eye contact for a second or two after that, looking down and away from whatever the hell expression was on Bucky’s face; he honestly couldn’t tell you what that might be. 

“Clint -” 

He looked up with a quick, flickering glance, sidelong blue, then looked over to where Steve was headed in their direction and winced, backed off a little. 

“Don’t yell at me for saving your life,” he said. “‘cos I’m gonna.” 

“You over-dramatic little shit,” Bucky said, helpless against it, and stepped into the wet solidity of him, wrapping his arms around Clint’s shoulders and going for one of those movie-ending kisses. 


	29. Chapter 29

Clint just shrugs at Steve’s look. 

“Katie-Kate ran out of skin on the back of her hand,” he says, his pink lips curling up into something a little prettier than his regular grin. Against the stubble it looks so - different. Odd. Special. 

Bucky remembers the waxy taste of lipstick. 

It’s fuckin’ odd, the things that come back, and the things that won’t. Steve looks at him in Brooklyn and expects him to remember why he’s angry in the middle of a sidewalk in front of some kinda shopping mall; Bucky trips over himself in Coney Island and laughs 80 years too late. 

Bucky remembers how lipstick used to taste, and the glossy pink of Clint’s lips would taste stark against his essence of coffee, he thinks, he wants to know.  

Clint’s lips keep curling up into it, like the feel of it is doin’ something for him. 

Like he gets how Bucky’s feeling right now. 


	30. Chapter 30

Bucky was still wearing a shirt, which Clint figured for a more reliable sign of mental instability than the whole brainwashing thing; who didn’t get a little brainwashed now and then? It was washed-thin and clung in places, enough for Clint to know that he’d  _really_ like to get a good look at what was underneath. Bucky was solid in a way that Clint was, that Clint wanted, and if there was gonna be one good thing to come out of this goddamn heatwave, then surely - 

“Okay,” he said, mentally willing the fan a little closer, “okay, desert island.” 

Bucky looked at him, using one hand to hold his hair away from the back of his neck. Clint made a mental note to steal him a couple of Pepper’s hair ties. 

“Okay,” he said, neutral, not unwilling to engage. 

Clint tried to telekinesis the fan into tilting a little more in his direction. Some day he was gonna discover his powers, and then the world would be sorry. 

“Who’re you gonna have with you?” Clint asked, and Bucky cocked his head, looking thoughtful. “Three people. Well, two - I mean,” Clint continued, “I guess Steve’s a given.” 

“And you’d take Natasha,” Bucky said. 

“Woah,” Clint said, “woah, no, I wouldn’t  _take_  Natasha, I’d  _want Natasha with me_ , there’s a difference, in that the second one is in no way my fault.”

Bucky snorted. 

“Second,” Clint said, “I’d want Tony there. He’d have us in four-star accommodation and have made a helicopter out of palm leaves and seven and a half coconuts within the first day.” 

“Howard,” Bucky said. “Same reason. And your third?” 

“Easy,” Clint said, “I’d take that Bobby kid from the X-men. Ice powers. Best possible choice.” 

“Sure,” Bucky said. “Why not.” He got up and headed for the door, tilting the fan a little so it was just about perfect on his way out. 

 

Clint found him later, when the roof was still bleeding heat into the still summer night but there was enough of a breeze, this high, to make it almost pleasant. 

“I didn’t choose you,” Clint said, and Bucky rolled his eyes like he didn’t care but, significantly, didn’t get up or walk away. “I’ve noticed you keeping the shirt on; I figure the arm just about burns in direct sunlight, huh?” 

Bucky shrugged. He favoured his metal shoulder a little. 

“Okay so first, you need to go to Tony about that, idiot, ‘cos he’s probably got five different ways to fix that without even thinking.” Clint took a deep breath. “Second, I’d do just about anything to avoid hurting you. Including miss out on your list of ways to kill someone with a coconut.” 

“Seven is not a list,” Bucky said, but the corner of his mouth had twitched up a little. 

“So,” Clint said, looking out over the city lights, “was your third one me?” 

Bucky turned to face him, reached up to touch his face, warm like sunlight and threatening to burn. Clint wasn’t sure if Bucky’d have made a move, ‘cos he didn’t offer the opportunity - just slid right into it, no hesitation, opening his mouth to Bucky’s and letting the sensation of it shiver through him. 

When Bucky pulled away he was smiling, a little flushed, flatteringly out of breath. Considering Clint felt like he’d been hit by a train, it was kinda reassuring. 

“My third one was Hedy Lamarr,” he said, and Clint shoved at his shoulder. 

“Ah, shove a coconut up your ass.” 

“Huh,” Bucky said. “Eight.” 


	31. Chapter 31

Bucky whipped the cloth across the cafe and directly into the sink, making Sam almost jump out of his skin. 

“You know you’re not supposed to do that when we’re open,” he said, arching an eyebrow at Bucky, who arched his own right back. 

“I have literally just flipped the sign,” he said, “who the hell is that desperate for -” 

He was interrupted by the jangle of the little bell over the door, followed by a hand gesture from Sam so smug that he really had to have practiced it. 

“Hey man,” Sam said, “what can I - damn. Do you need an ambulance?” 

Bucky span around and swore under his breath. The guy was a  _wreck_.

“Do you need the  _police_?” he said, guiding the guy to a chair without touching him, gently wafting him in that direction, ‘cos he was struggling to see anywhere he could lay a casual hand without hitting the epic levels of road rash the guy was sporting. 

“Nah, I - my fault,” he said, with a shrug and a wince. He already had a band-aid across the bridge of his nose, so either someone had already made a pathetic effort at helping him out or he was just seriously accident prone. “There was a dog in the road, and I kinda - I couldn’t leave it, y’know? And then I got grazed by this asshole in a Prius, and pretty much the only thing that could improve my shitty morning is your coffee.” 

‘cos yeah, under all the grazes, he was a regular. The good kind, the kind that was always too sleepy for small talk, just soft-edged grins that made Bucky duck behind his hair and make Sam take the register. 

“You know you can’t replace lost blood with coffee, right?” Sam said, making a face, and Bucky rolled his eyes at the boy scout in back. 

“Just grab him a black coffee,” Bucky said, “big as it comes.” 

“You know my order?” the guy said, sounding a little pleased by it, and Bucky snorted. 

“It’s one word,” he said. “Two, sometimes, if you’ve woken past hand gestures.” 

And then he folded his arms across his chest and fought against the rising color in his cheeks ‘cos yeah, okay,  _maybe_  he’d noticed him, and yeah, okay,  _maybe_  he was considering asking him out. 

 

 


	32. Chapter 32

The sun is lowering itself gingerly into the westerly sea as the boat noses up alongside the weathered dock, the gentle slap of waves in the cadence that means home. It’s been a soothing nothingness of a day, and his cheeks feel tight with forgotten sunscreen.

He ties up, grabs the empty cooler, the bait box, the fishing tackle, balances them with accustomed ease as he makes his way along the dock and to his old battered truck. The boxes are dumped, his rod placed with a little more care. The cab is pretty unbearable, and he sits with the door open, engine gently chugging, for the time it takes the air con to decide it’s gonna work. 

It’s shading into true evening when he stops at the general store, the orange streetlights just starting to flicker on, and he hesitates a moment over the truly awful microwaveable burritos that revolve sadly in a glass case before he grabs something frozen and pre-packaged, balances a six-pack on top. The kid behind the counter barely looks up from his phone as he takes the money, makes change, the easy nonchalance of small-town living. He’s not sure how long it takes to develop that, but he’s looking forward to finding out. 

There’s someone leaning against his truck. 

There’s a moment he considers cutting and running. Then he sighs, crosses the cracked tarmac that’s used rarely enough that the weeds are growing through it, and settles his weight against the sun-warmed metal. 

“I’m too old,” Clint says, “I’m too tired, I’m too slow. How many times have I gotta say I’m not coming back?” 

“At least once more,” Bucky says, same as always, but this time he sounds a little off. Clint pushes off the truck, loads his sad excuse for groceries into the passenger footwell, and leans back against the truck a little closer than before. 

“You okay?” Clint asks, and the laughs that bubbles out of Bucky cracks in all the wrong places. 

“I’m not slow,” he says, “but I’m old, and I’m so fuckin’ tired, Clint. Can I - can I come and stay with you?”

And the answer’s gonna be the same whether he means a couple days, a month, the better part of a lifetime - ten years and countless therapy appointments, and he’s still never able to tell him anything but yes. 

 

 


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mer!Clint

Bucky winds his way through the narrow rows of the farmer and fishers’ market, making a mental note to come back to the cheese stall because something on there smells somewhere between incredible and appalling, and Bucky wants to see Clint’s face when he tries it. 

Probably something like Bucky’s when Clint’d brought him seaweed-wrapped roe. 

It’s like… a cultural exchange, kinda. They’ve started bringing a little something for each other every night, now; seashells and chocolate, peanut butter and sand dollars, pizza and an empty can of Tab. 

Then they sit and talk - for hours, sometimes - and it’s like being from completely different worlds, different  _centuries_. There’s so little they share, and it’s fascinating and frustrating and impossibly amazing to negotiate meaning between themselves. 

Bucky ducks around the Wauneka twins and makes no bones about avoiding Mr McClusky on his way to the little stall down the end that’d caught his eye the week before. They were nothing much, braided leather with the occasional bead, but the bracelets just kinda - he thought they’d look good on Clint, that was all. 

“What’s got you smiling?” the old lady behind the stall asked, and Bucky pushed his hair out of his face and scowled, which made her face crease with a thousand smiles. 

“Thinking about a friend,” he said, and his finger went out almost without conscious thought to trail over an iridescent purple bead. 

“Must be quite a catch,” the woman said, and Bucky laughs like it’s knocked out of him on an awkward stumble, caught wrong-footed and unprepared. 


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hunger Games

Clint could feel himself sliding down a little, not even the strength to keep himself sitting upright, but the warmth of Natasha against his back was everything he could’ve asked for in his last moments. 

“Thanks, Tasha,” he said, cupping the berries in his hand, watching them roll black as night against his callused palm. “For looking out for me.” 

She swore at him in whatever reworking of Common they’d developed in 12. “Don’t thank me,” she said, and shifted against him. He considered apologising to her - she was probably sitting in a pool of his blood - but figured she’d snap at him for that, too. Instead he leaned his head back against her shoulder and tried to keep his eyes open. 

“The medicine, though,” he mumbled. “So helpful.” 

“Then thank Bucky,” she said. 

Bucky was her sponsor. Champion from years past, long dark hair and thousand-yard stare, and all the patience in the world when he was teaching Natasha to fight. When he was sitting in hollow-eyed silence with Clint in the avoidance of dreams neither of them could talk about. 

He’d lost his arm in the arena, Bucky. Lost something else, too, something that Clint had flattered himself had maybe started coming back in the last couple days, when he made jokes as dry as a desert and quirked the tiniest sidelong smile when Clint doubled over laughing. It’d been a bright moment in a life that’d had a scarcity.

He let out a long breath. 

“Thanks, Bucky,” he said, and Clint toasted the sky with his palm full of poison. 


	35. Chapter 35

Bucky took out his knife again before he got into the car, and he saw the guy - Clint, Clint, he repeated it over so he wouldn’t forget - eyeing it where it was held loosely in his lap, but he didn’t say anything. Just sat for an awkward moment before he swore under his breath, jumped out the truck so he could circle around to close Bucky’s door for him. 

Bucky only flinched a little at the slam. 

Rural Iowa was like the ocean at night. The gentle hushed corn ripples, the overwhelming blackness, the impossible depth of sky. Bucky craned his neck to look up at the stars, somehow infinitely more appealing when he was somewhere warm and comfortable and not immediately dangerous. 

Clint turned on the radio. He had a gorgeous voice. 

The farm, when they drew up to it, was a little dilapidated but not in a way that set off warning bells. It looked lived in, a little bit messy, a half-dismantled car and some kinda scooter-sled thing over by the barn. Happy barking greeted their feet on the porch and Clint grinned over at him, easy and open. 

“You’d think I’d never fed him,” he said, and pushed open the door to release a hurricane of warm golden fur, delighted and nosing at Bucky’s hip as Clint slung the bag and guitar case over his shoulder and then almost smacked himself in the head when he grabbed for the crate of beets. 

Bucky waited until he’d disappeared from view before he tucked his knife back into his waistband and gave the overly affectionate dog an ear rub. 

The house didn’t look like the decorations had much changed since maybe the ‘50s, although there was a huge flat-screen television in the living room, surrounded by unplugged wires. The floorboards creaked a symphony as he walked down the hall, and there were picture frames in which he could just about make out a younger Clint’s face - he found himself kinda wanting to see them a little clearer. 

“Come on through,” Clint called. “Make yourself at home.” 


	36. Chapter 36

“I’m gonna -” 

Clint curled himself carefully out from under Natasha’s legs, placing her feet gently on a cushion before standing and stretching, arching his back and wincing a little at all the knots there. 

“You’re gonna stay for dinner,” Barnes said, not looking away from the TV. He was slumped into the armchair - Clint didn’t know him well, but he’d read the no touching vibe just fine - and his head was tilted down a little, his long hair making it difficult to read his expression. 

Not that Clint would’ve had much of a chance anyway. Bucky Barnes was an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a dirty sock; so far as Clint’d worked out Steve had brought him home one day and puppy-eyed at Tasha until she’d said they could keep him. It was a two bedroom apartment, and there was no sign of bedding anywhere around the couch, so Clint was kinda assuming they were banging on the regular. 

It was a compelling mental image. 

“Nah, I couldn’t,” Clint said, “thanks, though.” 

“You’ll make Steve sad if you don’t stay,” Tasha put in, looking up at him lazily from her sprawl. “Do you want to make Steve sad?” The implication, heavy in her voice, was that she’d do terrible things to anyone who made Steve sad. Those two had a relationship that Clint didn’t quite understand, dry comments and in jokes and weirdly tense body language. 

“I’ve got -” Clint tried, flapping a hand towards the door in a way that he hoped conveyed that he had something gourmet in a slow-cooker at home. 

“Fritos, a jar of mayonnaise and a pizza menu,” Barnes finished for him, and Tasha laughed, and Clint wasn’t gonna lie it kinda stung. 

“Quit telling tales out of school,” he said, and she tilted her head. 

“Tell me I’m wrong,” she said. 

Barnes unearthed himself from the armchair and came over, slow and kinda smooth, like he was approaching a skittish animal. 

“Clint,” he said, all soft and low, “stay for dinner.” His eyes were a weapon. 

“But -” Clint said, then looked down, dumbfounded - Barnes’d pulled his hand outta the pouch of his hoodie and just barely traced down the side of Clint’s hand. Nothing so small should feel so electric. 


	37. Chapter 37

He’s reached the stage of tired where there’s nothing left outside of it. He’s probably hurting, there may well be blood, but it’s nothing to the leaden feeling of his limbs, the inability to reach the end of a thought. The fragmented soldier is wearing away and he’s not sure yet what’s showing through from underneath. 

There’s a flag flapping idly in the barest warm breeze and if he could raise his head he’d know where he is, or narrow it down, at least. Instead he walks, trudges over uneven stone, with his long sleeves and his long hair sticking and uncomfortable, with his boots wearing away right down to his sole. 

Maybe tomorrow he’ll remember how he got here. Maybe tomorrow he’ll remember where he was going. Maybe tomorrow he’ll have found somewhere to stay that will still take his money and consider it more important than the screaming dreams that had his last landlady’s patience wearing away. 

“Hey, man,” a voice says, “I’ve been looking for you,” and he’s no kind of sandman, a quiver of arrows instead of a sack, but the fragmented soldier is too tired to see clearly, wearing away too much to fight. 

“Let’s get you home, huh?” The sandman approaches him warily, but curls him in close enough when he wavers, rough and tight and perfect. The fragment maybe imagine/remembers the kiss that’s bussed against his temple, right where the soldier is all worn away. 


	38. Chapter 38

Barton finds the coffee, one sleepy-eyed morning, and puts it on the counter in front of him. Bucky’s grudging thanks get a shrug and a stretched out yawning grin.

*

“Hey,” Barton says, mid-corridor hand on his arm, “they’re just testing the sirens. Every Thursday at 11, okay?”

*

“Infirmary’s this way,” Barton tells him, jerking his head for Bucky to come along. He’s ghostly with concrete dust, battered and bleeding, looks like he should be in one of the beds himself, but as soon as the doctor appears at Steve’s bedside he’s gone.

*

Barton knocks at the door of his room, barely recognisable behind a pile of bedding.

“Hey,” he says, and grins wide and friendly, his hair wild with static. “The aesthetic is magazine spread, the pillow quality is French prison, right?”

“Weirdly specific,” Bucky croaks. He hasn’t spoken to anyone today.

“I’ve visited a few,” Barton says with a grin. He dumps the armful of pillows and blankets on the couch and dusts off his hands, looking like he’s preparing to leave, and Bucky jerks forward without thinking.

“You wanna - um - beer, Barton?” He asks, and Barton’s answering smile is blinding.

“Clint,” he says.

*

Bucky can’t look, he doesn’t want to look, he’s had his fill of looking.

“Oh no, okay, that is both gross and awesome,” Clint says. He’s sitting on a workbench across from Bucky, watching avidly as Stark does something to the plates on Bucky’s arm.

“It’s a piece of crap,” Stark says. “No offence, Skywalker.”

“Hero farm boy,” Clint clarifies at Bucky’s look. “Metal hand.”

“Just don’t - ” Bucky’s voice grates out of his throat. “Don’t fuck with anything, okay?”

“But there’s so much I could -” Stark whines, but Clint overrides him.

“He touches anything he shouldn’t and I’ll hold him down while you run,” he promises.

*

“Yeah, it’s legal now,” Clint tells him, while Bucky gapes at the TV. “I mean, people aren’t kind, but -”

He makes a soft noise, startled, but his mouth opens against Bucky’s, sweet and hot and curving into a smile, and Bucky is so impossibly fucking grateful.

 

 


	39. Chapter 39

Clint came through the apartment door whistling. He shrugged off his battered jacket and hung it up, kicked off his sneakers and then lined them up carefully by the door, spun on his heel and was immediately confronted with a suspicious glare from the couch. 

“What?” 

“You’re tidying,” Bucky said, flatly, like this was so entirely out of character for Clint. He’d vacuumed just last month! 

“I’m in a good mood,” Clint said, and Bucky narrowed his eyes and watched him as he rounded the couch, dropped a kiss on Bucky’s suspicious squinty face and tossed a packet of Twinkies into his lap. 

“What’s got you so happy?” 

“I just paid off the overdraft I’ve had since 2002,” Clint said, and it felt like a shimmying moment so he did a little shimmy. Bucky looked unimpressed. Clint stood by it. “I just went $2 into the black since it was getting hot in here.” He dropped a wink, “so take off all your clothes.”

“I think that was the worst thing you’ve ever said to me,” Bucky sounded thoughtful, but Clint was pretty sure the corner of his mouth was twitching. 

“Since  _2002_ , Buck,” Clint said. 

“So what’s with the Twinkies?”

Clint shrugged. “It’s a significant two dollars,” he said. “I wanted to spend them on you.” 

Bucky’s face went on an emotional journey, and Clint was still figuring out the map; it ended on a scowl but… one of the good ones, one of the ones they’d built their relationship on. 

“You’re a fuckin’ mook,” Bucky said, hooking his finger into Clint’s waistband. 

“A mook with  _35 cents_ ,” Clint said, smug as all hell, and went with it happily when Bucky rolled his eyes and tugged him into his lap.


	40. Chapter 40

“Don’t bother,” Bucky said, muffled a little by the shirt he was pulling over his head. He was tired, he was a little cold, he ached like hell - hey, he’d thought, easy gig, but holding position for stretches of time in a draughty studio wasn’t so easy as it looked. 

“Um.” 

Bucky tugged down his shirt, shoved his hair back out of his face and turned to face the guy. He’d been tucked in a corner, looking like he had no idea what he was doing there the whole time. Tall and wheat-blond and yeah, okay, Bucky had spent a little time staring at his arms while the guy had turned pinker and obviously tried not to stare at Bucky’s dick.

“Hitting on the model is a dick move,” Bucky said flatly, and the guy flushed again and ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck. He’d have thought it was a calculated move - it emphasised his beautiful goddamn muscles just  _perfect_  - if the guy didn’t looks so horrifically  _awkward_. 

“No, I - sorry,” he said, and then quickly shoved something into Bucky’s hand. His fingers curled around it reflexively and he stared down at the packet of cookies for a second, bemused. 

“I stole them from my therapist’s office,” the guy said, with a tentative grin. “Your stomach growled loud enough even I could hear it.” 

“Oh,” Bucky said, taken off-guard and off-balance. “Thanks.” 

And the muscles were a treat but his bashful smile was goddamn  _beautiful._  


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/b/o

Most - nearly all of the time, it was easy enough to ignore Barnes’ orientation. 

Clint wasn’t one of those Alphas. He didn’t really… he  _gave_  a shit, but he made a consistent and concerted effort not to let it make a difference to the way he treated people. He’d had enough shit about not being Alpha enough through his life - fighting from a distance, being a gymnast, marrying another Alpha - to know that orientations were shit, and making any judgements based on them was an exercise in idiocy. 

It was just the odd occasion where instinct overrode reason, and Clint was having some serious issues right now. 

Bucky Barnes had found an abandoned kitten. So far, so awful. He was cradling it in his metal hand and gently petting its tiny ginger head, which was bad enough, but they’d both been caught in the rain, too, and now his long hair was dripping down his face and the long line of his neck, his eyelashes dark and spiky, and he looked… vulnerable, in a way he never did. Like he could do with someone taking care. 

And  _fuck_ , Clint cared. 

“- to Barton, Earth to Barton -”

“Oh god, Tasha,  _help me_ ,” he said, low and urgent. He turned to her and gripped her sleeve with desperate fingers. “I need - you need to get me out of here, you need to stuff my nose with wax and tie me to a mast, this is -”

“You want me to kill you?” she asked, half laughing. 

Clint watched Bucky laugh as the tiny kitten nibbled on his finger, his cheeks flushed the barest pink. 

“ _That would be easier,”_ he whined. 


	42. Chapter 42

They’d had Clint for two and a half days, and he’d come back bruised and bitching and broken - the ulna, specifically, ‘cos you had to try a lot fuckin’ harder than that for metaphorically,  _assholes_.

Once they’d wrapped him all neatly in plaster and gauze he figured he was about done and made a break for it, scooting around the medics and pretending he was Romanian when the security guard challenged him. And yeah, okay, maybe the traffic noise had him flinching, and he slightly sorta passed out on the subway, but the flowers - weeds - were blooming in Bed-Stuy, and he hadn’t felt clean in way too long.

He was kinda wondering how much it’d cost to fit four floors of those stair-lift things.

The little bodega on the corner had basically everything a man could need save a vitamin, but Clint was starting to feel the stairs in the line of his spine, so instead of trash bags he made do with saran wrap and packing tape. More stairs, sure, but sweet rushing hot water waited at the end of it, and he let out a long breath under the stream and pretended it didn’t hitch some, in the middle.

He was just regarding the all-in-one shampoo-conditioning-body wash with something like despair when the shower door rattled open and the water beating against his back was abruptly blocked. Clint sighed and leaned back, resting his stupid busted arm along the one that curved cool against his stomach, and twisted his head around until he could press a kiss against Bucky’s tight jaw.

“I’m fine,” he said, and then - because there was a weight to that lie that he didn’t want to carry, “how come I have to wrap my arm but you don’t have to wrap yours?” 

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky said flatly, running his hand up over Clint’s chest and curving his hand - protective and possessive - around Clint’s throat. They both knew that was only half about his comment, and Clint nodded his head and rested his chin against warming metal. 

“I know it,” Clint said, apology made clear in his voice so he didn’t have to listen to Bucky refuse to accept it. 

Bucky sighed and pulled away, leaving a moment of chill before he was back with a palm-full of sea-breeze fresh, pressing a kiss against the nape of Clint’s neck before massaging tender into Clint’s hair.

 

 


	43. Chapter 43

Clint is sitting by the barely open window, slumped forward with his eyes closed, when the spray of torrential rain is cut off for a moment. 

“Hey,” he says, not opening his eyes, “there’s pizza in the fridge.”

There’s always pizza in the fridge, or leftover Chinese, or kielbasa and cabbage from the Polish place down on Quincy. He’s honestly kinda grateful for the help, ‘cos it’s tough persuading them to deliver when you’re only buying enough for one. 

Unbuckling noises, unzipping, and when Clint opens his eyes there’re heavy black boots left by his side, dripping rainwater absorbed by the newspaper that’s been placed carefully underneath, and he feels his heart give a stupid lurch. 

He wipes the rain off his face and slides the window closed, pushing up to his aching feet. He stretches, carefully, bracing his hands in the small of his back, and moves how he’s learned to, slow and with care. The gentle hum of the microwave does wonders for making the apartment feel less empty, and the spaces between him and his next task feel navigable if someone else is there.

The pile of dishes has been festering for a few days now - possibly the better part of a week - so that’s where he starts, rolling his sleeves up and getting stuck in. He’s prune-fingered and procrastinating when the still-warm plate and fork are placed on the counter by him, and once those’re done he drains the water and turns around to lean, a stripe of wet forming against the small of his back. 

There’s an assassin on the couch with wet hair and bare feet, and it’s honestly an exercise in stupidity, how easy Clint falls in love. 


	44. Chapter 44

Clint doesn’t like to think about the time immediately post-Loki. He doesn’t like to think about sleepless nights, and shaking hands, and how he could barely hold his bow. The SHIELD therapist attempted to talk about his past, his parents, and then - having got the measure of his reluctance - set him tasks and had JARVIS report on his completion. 

Weirdly, he found that the baking worked. Pounding out his frustrations into bread, and the zen of measuring and weighing, and the precision required to pipe tiny flowers onto sugar cookies; it was easier to breathe when the air smelled freshly baked. 

The bread he ate, mostly, and the amazing sourdough pizza base, but the cookies and cakes got left in various Stark Industries kitchens and - when Tony wasn’t being an asshole - the lab. He made pyraniki for Natasha, cantuccini to go with Pepper’s coffee, beignets to decorate Sam’s shirt with powdered sugar. 

And occasionally, maybe, he baked in the middle of the night, but at least his hands didn’t shake. 

He was creaming butter and sugar when the shadow in the doorway caught his attention, and it stayed there when he beat in the eggs and vanilla. He was elbow deep in flour before it slunk forward, resolved into dark hair and shadowed eyes and the jarring shine of his arm. Clint nodded a little welcome but kept working the dough before he could saran wrap it and put it in the refrigerator, making them both coffee before taking a seat. 

Bucky stared down at the dark liquid. Clint stared at his averted face. 

“It clears your head,” he said eventually, and Bucky huffed out a breath. 

“Could do with that,” he said, and Clint - moment of madness - reached across the table to touch the barest tremble of his right hand, press gently to still the shaking there. 

“Wanna help me make something beautiful?” he said. 


	45. Chapter 45

Clint shoves his feet into his sneakers, shoves his boxers into his pocket, zips his hoodie up over the remains of his shirt. It’s colder than it ought to be, this time of year, and the stupid, overwhelming, humiliating urge to climb back between warm musty sheets is almost overwhelming.

He’s pretty sure he’s made enough of a fool of himself for one night, though.

Warm orange street light is slipping around the edge of the curtain and glinting off metal, finding its way into highlights in Bucky’s hair. It always shows the edges of things in darkness, and Bucky’s nothing but edges.  _Clint’s_  the one with the warm gooey centre, getting his feelings all over everything, oozing outside of the bounds of what this is and making a fucking mess.

At least he’s learning? At least this time he’s not gonna stay for a horrifically awkward breakfast. At least this time he’s not gonna stare down into his coffee and wait for Bucky to say something, anything, to wait for some kinda acknowledgement that’s never gonna come. Last time, Bucky barely managed a goodbye. This time, Clint’s saving him the effort.

He makes it to the door - pause at the kitchen table to pick up his wallet and keys, which’d been digging into his ass when Bucky pushed him up against the fridge. He makes it to the door before he’s shoved forward against it - not hard, but implacable, irresistible weight.

“Hey, Bucky,” he says, resigned. 

Bucky just kinda grunts, burying his face against the side of Clint’s neck, wrapping his arms around Clint’s chest, warm and naked and possibly still sleeping. Clint’s basically helpless against reaching up to put a hand in Bucky’s hair, scratching through the tangle there, and Bucky responds with an uncoordinated kiss pressed to the corner of Clint’s jaw.

“I should go,” he says, and Bucky makes a protesting noise and holds him tighter, running slack lips down the line of his neck, nuzzling into the crook there. “So - not a morning person, I guess?” Clint asks, and it’s still barest edges and all orange-lit, but Clint’s seeing things in a new light.

 

 


	46. Chapter 46

Bucky tripped over a pair of shoes and woulda been flat on his ass except for the pair of arms that grabbed him, held him up, strong and freckled and impossibly sexy, and liberally covered in band-aids. 

“You’re kinda a disaster area, huh?” 

“Excuse me?” Clint - he was pretty sure Clint, that wasn’t the kinda name his drunk brain would make up - pulled away and, when he turned, was going for offended, “which of us just fell over a -  _shit_.” 

Bucky blinked down at Clint, flat on his ass and tangled up in laces, and felt the laugh coming, unstoppable and golden. It’d been so goddamn long since he couldn’t breathe with it, felt tears starting up in the corner of his eyes, and he crashed to his knees and leaned in for another of those goddamn addicting kisses, still bubbling laughter against Clint’s lips. 

When he pulled away he rested his forehead against Clint’s for a second, watching as Clint blinked open misty blue eyes and looked at him like he was a revelation, like he was something Clint couldn’t quite believe he had. It was a hell of a boost to the ego, and it was a hell of a dangerous feeling, so Bucky pushed himself from hands and knees up to his feet and stretched out a hand to help Clint stand, too. 

“You promised me food,” he said. 

“I did,” Clint agreed, and then looked a little worried. “I did do that.” 

Clint’s cupboards held microwave popcorn, elderly peanut butter, quinoa of all fuckin’ things. His fridge was a little more useful, with leftover pizza and disintegrating golabki and a vat load of mayonnaise. 

Clint was a goddamn mess with a beautiful pair of blue eyes, and Bucky was in over his head. 

“You can take the couch,” Clint said, once he was done eating, “‘cos it’s at least three times as comfortable as the bed.”

“Aren’t we gonna -?” Bucky asked, and made a hand gesture that Clint evidently thought was pretty illustrative, if the gentle pink he was flushing was any indication.

“We’re drunk,” Clint said, and grinned a beautiful slow grin. “I want you in my bed ‘cos you want to be there even when you’re sober, so maybe tomorrow you could stick around.” 

“Who doesn’t want peanut butter quinoa for fuckin’ breakfast,” Bucky said, and leaned in to kiss Clint’s growing smile. 


	47. Chapter 47

The whispers and rumours start gently spreading out from them as they move, people pointing and gaping and grinning fit to burst. Clint figured they’re all over Instasnap - Bucky dressed in black and faded red, hair twisted back so anyone can see the rainbow painted onto his cheek. Clint’s costume is already pretty purple, but he’s added pink and blue for the occasion, because if you’re gonna do this, you go big or go home. Somewhere, a PR team is having conniptions.

The atmosphere is electric, like nothing else. Clint’d say it’s like the circus except no one here’s a spectator; it’s a celebration of each and every damn one of them, and of what they’ve got through to get here, of how proud they can be of themselves and each other. It’s a party and it’s a parade, and to Bucky it seems like a goddamn epiphany.

“You okay?” He asks, and Bucky’s fingers tighten painfully on his.

“No,” Bucky says. “Yes.” And then, almost vicious in its intensity, “okay is not the word.”

And Clint leans in to it, opens to it, presses himself forward into it when Bucky kisses him, because he knows that’s easier for him than admitting to the tears, because he likes nothing in this world better than kissing Bucky, because he’s in love and he’s gonna tell him that any moment now.

“Hey, man, great cosplay!” Someone dressed as - geez, hot-pants Steve, apparently - yells.

“It ain’t,” Bucky yells back, and Clint wraps his hand tighter against cool metal and tugs him through the dancing crowd.


	48. Chapter 48

There was a knock at the door at 7, which seemed odd. Tasha had said she had a proposition for him, but she’d never knocked at her own front door before. Clint padded to the door on bare feet and tried not to gape when he opened it, ‘cos tall, dark and angry had a whole heaping of handsome to go along with it, and Clint felt his stomach fizz at the way the guy glared. 

“I’m here to see Natasha,” he said, sounding a little confused, and Clint invited him in and offered him a beer, the barest suspicion - the barest stirrings of hope - moving in his stomach. 

“So how do you know Natasha?” Clint asked, once names had been exchanged and the couch had been settled into, Bucky’s heavy motorcycle boots neatly placed under the coffee table and his socked feet crossed on top of it. 

“We used to date,” Bucky said, and Clint kinda flushed because he was starting to see the shape of Tasha’s plan, here. 

“Uh, yeah,” he said, “I mean, we’re flatmates now, but - same,” and Bucky eyed him sidelong, a quick up and down that lingered on his arms and seemed like he was being sized up for something good. Clint grinned into the mouth of his bottle of beer. 

When he came back from fetching them another - Bucky’d found something explodey but inoffensive on the TV - Clint took a chance and settled himself a little closer on the couch, passing the beer across to Bucky, who took it, passed it over to his left hand, let his right settle onto the couch casually close enough that his little finger was pressed against Clint’s leg. And it was embarrassing that he had to shift a little at that, that he was starting to get a little hard, but Bucky was a beautiful man and if Natasha intended them all to - if Tasha was aiming for - well, showing a little interest wasn’t gonna hurt. 

“So Clint,” Bucky said, his little finger moving, stroking up and down the outside of his thigh, “enjoying the movie, huh?” There was a smirk on his face and heavy in his voice, and Clint flushed a little and shrugged. 

“What can I say,” he said, “Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a beautiful man.” 

“You like ‘em tall, dark and handsome, huh?” Bucky asked, and he shifted on the couch so he was facing Clint, who curved into him right back and, daring, lifted his hand to tug lightly at Bucky’s long hair. 

“I have a type,” he said, voice low, and groaned into Bucky’s mouth when the other man leaned in. 

*

 _You’re welcome_ , was scrawled on the whiteboard attached to the refrigerator, when Bucky emerged from Clint’s room the next morning. He glowered at it - never liked to feel manipulated - but that didn’t stop him erasing it and carefully printing his number in its place, feeling kinda like an idiot and kinda slow-growing good about the little ‘x’ he put at the end. 


	49. Chapter 49

Maybe you’re watching the final of the British Bake Off and you’re smiling a little ‘cos yeah, Nadiya worked hard for it, she deserves it, and you wonder when the hell did you start caring about this?

Maybe you hear a sniffing from the other end of the couch; not the subtle little sniffs of someone who’s trying to do anything to hide it, but the red-eyed snot-waterfall sleeve-wiped tears of someone with too great a goddamn investment in reality TV. 

Maybe you haul the scruffy blond idiot across the couch cushions until you can wrap him up entirely, take over sleeve duty. Listen to him sniffling and snorting and laughing at himself, at you, at the whole goddamn situation. Rock him a little, back and forth, and realise you’re only half-way mocking. 

Maybe you think:  _When the hell did you become my favorite person?_

(Maybe you think:  _God help me._ )


	50. Chapter 50

Bucky checked the sight lines before drawing the cheap curtains aggressively, turning around to find that Clint had already wormed his way out of the gag and was pretty close to ripping free of the tape around his wrists. Bucky left him to it, checked out the bathroom and eyed the undersized window thoughtfully before deciding there was no way Clint’d fit his shoulders through it. 

Back out in the main room, Clint was completely free, reclining on the bed and rubbing his wrists with a scowl. He hadn’t made a break for it - had, in fact, put the chain on the door - so Bucky was betting on it being one of their more civilised interactions. From Clint’s end, at least. 

“What was the rule,” he said, flatly. 

Clint rolled his eyes and opened and closed his hand at him -  _blah, blah, blah_  - but Bucky had checked that he was wearing his aids before ambushing him. He didn’t like using an unfair advantage. 

“What was the goddamn  _rule_ , Barton,” he said. 

“What was I supposed to do, leave those fuckheads to it? It wasn’t like anyone saw me -”

“‘cos the _arrows_  aren’t any kind of goddamned give away, or anything.” 

“I can’t -” Clint sounded subdued, now. Stubborn, still, but a little sorry about it. “You know I couldn’t leave her to -” 

Bucky let out a long breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. Jesus, if Clint was the kind of man who could let bad things happen, Bucky wouldn’t be in this goddamn inconvenient emotional situation in the first place. 

“I saved your life -” Bucky started, and Clint grumbled. 

“You  _didn’t kill me_ , that’s not exactly the same -” 

“- and that makes me responsible for it. You keep drawing attention to yourself and you  _know_  they’re not gonna give up.”

“I can’t not be me,” Clint said, and Bucky sat on the end of the bed and found himself curling a hand around Clint’s ankle, brushing his thumb across the skin there. 

“I want you to  _keep_  being you,” Bucky said. “That’s the whole fuckin’ point.” 

“Buck?” Clint said, sounding uncertain, and Bucky met his eyes, letting everything show there, watching Clint’s widen, vulnerable blue. 


	51. Chapter 51

Clint stretched his arm out across the back of the couch and Bucky didn’t hesitate in taking the cushion next to his, curling into his side and tangling his fingers into the loose material of Clint’s shirt. 

Tony blinked at them. Stared, and then blinked again. 

“Rogers,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth, “are you seeing this?” 

Steve shrugged. 

“Nap buddies,” he said, and there was a chorus of  _nap buddies!_  from the couch, along with a pair of raised fists. 

“I -” Tony honestly looked lost for words, gaping like a fish. “Nap buddies is not a thing, you know this, right?” 

“You just wish you thought of it,” Clint said lazily, and okay, Tony might be having certain thoughts in the direction of a certain Mr Rhodes, but -

“That is not a thing adults do,” he said decisively. “Unless they are also having Special Adult Time behind closed doors. Holy shit,” he said, a revelation, “are you two fucking?” 

“We’re not fuckin’, Stark,” Bucky drawled, but Clint looked kinda startled. He gently threaded his fingers into Bucky’s dark hair and tilted his head back, a significance to the eye-contact that was making Tony a little uncomfortable to be in the same room. 

“Wait,” Clint said softly, “should we be fucking?” 

Bucky’s eyes went distant, thoughtful for a moment, Clint’s thumb stroking restlessly across his temple, and then a slow and  _filthy_  grin spread across his face. 

“Wanna?” he asked, and Clint barely waited for him to get the word out before he was pressing forward, taking his mouth in the sort of kiss that presaged a happy ending, every time. 


	52. Chapter 52

The morning was all washed clean, clouds pinned out to dry against the sky and the bright white morning light casting the sort of sharp-edged shadows that seemed a little unreal in a habitually gray world. 

Clint hauled a hooded sweater over his bare chest, grabbed the whole pot of coffee and padded barefoot down the stairs. Today wasn’t a roof day, ‘cos roof days were for distance, and Clint was feeling the odd sort of benevolence that beautiful mornings sometimes brought out in a person. Today was a milk crate on the sidewalk day, a suspicious looks at morning greetings day, a bodega cat snuggle day. Tomorrow could be about the fleas. 

The rough brick was cold against his back but the vacant lot opposite allowed him a patch of sunlight to bask in, and Clint tipped his head back against his building and smiled a little into it. The sun did that, made things grow, the weeds in sidewalk cracks and the grin on Clint’s face. 

“What’s got you so happy?” a voice said, and Clint opened his eyes and squinted up at Bucky, silhouetted against the light, rumpled and bed-headed and working hard at a scowl. 

“Sunshine,” Clint said, and curved his hand around the back of Bucky’s knee, finding the little hole in the borrowed sweatpants and pressing his finger there. He beamed up and watched the scowl relent a little. “Beginnings,” he said. 


	53. Chapter 53

“I am not the coolest guy here,” Sam said, and Rhodey grinned and clinked their glasses together. 

“I always believe Tony’s plans will work,” he said in his turn, at which Tony made an offended face, pressing his hand to his chest, mouthing soundless protests. Rhodey arched an eyebrow, and Tony sighed. 

“I always believe my plans will work,” he said, resigned, and laughter rose around the table. 

“I,” said Natasha, thoughtfully, “am a very trusting person.” 

“I am proud to support this government,” Steve said, staring down into his beer. That kinda put a damper on the game, after that. The talk turned small but close, and the pitchers drained, and Clint found himself climbing over a god and a robot so he could make his way to the bathroom, only he took a wrong turning and found himself outside under the stars, instead. 

“Clint Barton sucks,” a voice said from the shadows, and Clint rolled his eyes. 

“Hey Bucky,” he said, and Bucky emerged grin first from the darkness, like that asshole Disney cat. That guy had always showed up in Clint’s dreams, too. 

“Clint Barton’s kinda dumb,” Bucky went on, coming to lean against the wall by Clint, close enough their shoulders were touching. 

“Thanks,” Clint said, pissed and trying not to show it, arms folded across his chest. 

“He’s great at picking up hints, too,” Bucky said, amusement lightening his voice some, “never let a compliment bounce off his impenetrable fuckin’ armor.” 

“Bucky Barnes is a goddamn asshole,” Clint said, and Bucky laughed softly, the sound curling warm inside Clint’s chest. 

“Breakin’ the rules,” Bucky said. “Drink.” 

And - right. They were supposed to -

“I really hate the freckles he gets across the bridge of his nose in the summer,” Bucky said, slow and thoughtful, “and he’s never made me laugh. He’s a terrible shot, fuckin’ awful -” he swallowed audibly - “and I’ve never thought about kissing him, not even once.” 

“Shit,” Clint said, grabbing for Bucky’s hand and hanging on like an idiot, his stomach swooping like a rollercoaster, “the hell am I supposed to say to that?” 

“Lie to me,” Bucky said. 


	54. Chapter 54

“It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone,” Steve said, earnest with a little sass, in that uniquely Steve way. “I carry a shield, they should understand that means I’m ready to fight.”

“I -” Tony was going slowly tomato red, and Clint was enjoying the  _hell_  out of his breakfast this morning. “No, I know, I just - it’s -”

He sent Clint a speaking look, a  _pleading_  look, but there was no way in hell that Clint was getting involved. It was like a performance art piece. He felt a little guilty that he was the only one who got to experience it. 

Clint considered for a moment, then took out his phone. 

“We’ve had that conversation about archaic slang,” Tony said, desperate, and Steve put his hands on his hips, ‘free licks’ emblazoned across his chest for all to see. 

“What about it?” Steve asked innocently, but Clint  _saw_  the tiny quirk of his lips, okay, he  _knew_.

“You are an evil, evil man,” he told Bucky, later that morning, “and I gotta say I’m a little attracted to you, right now.” 

“Only a little?” Bucky asked, and - wow, okay, Clint hadn’t thought that was the conversation he was having, but he was  _fine_  with it. 

“I -” he grinned, helpless, and jerked his head vaguely in the direction of his quarters. “You should come see my punny shirt collection,” he said. “Reckon we can get Steve to wear ‘Save a popsicle’ and make Tony’s head explode?”

“This,” Bucky said gleefully, “is the beginning of a beautiful goddamn friendship.” 


	55. Chapter 55

“If you hadn’t needed those red vines so goddamn badly we coulda been half way to Vegas right now.”

Clint rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah, change the gramophone record. And yeah, that is absolutely a crack about how old you are, ‘cos you complain like an old man.” 

“Yeah, well, you drive like one,” Bucky said, pulling a pair of sunglasses out - of where? Where the hell had he been keeping those? - and sliding them on, leaning back in his seat and propping his arm along the window. “Good luck getting us there before we’re 90.” 

“Pretty sure that milestone’s been and gone, grandpa,” Clint groused. He looked over for a second, watching the wind curl hair across Bucky’s face, something low and warm and squirming in his stomach. 

“You think the groom’s gonna be mad if we’re late?” he asked, and Bucky rolled his head to look at him. 

“How the hell is he gonna be mad?” Bucky said, and Clint glanced over again to see a faint smile at home on his lips like they were built for it. “Guy’s marrying the love of his life.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

Clint watched the world whip past, smiling wide and bright and graceless. 

“Love you too,” he said. 

 

 


	56. Chapter 56

Bucky sighed and collapsed against the back of the couch, staring up at the ceiling as if he was praying it’d fall on him. 

“I’m not  _saying_ I don’t like the idea of making a statement, Stevie, I’m  _saying_ this ain’t my idea, this ain’t my fault, and this sure as hell ain’t what I’d’ve chosen, okay?” 

 _“_ Look, I don’t know know what you expected to happen when you sweep your boyfriend into a kiss right outta the movies -”

 _“_ I thought he was dead, okay, cut me some slack here!” 

 _“_ \- in the middle of a fight, okay, which means  _cameras_ , which means guys with  _telephones_ , which means -”

 _“_ You’re not gonna protest boyfriends?” Clint said in an undertone. He was right next to Bucky, a little more rigid, sitting on his hands. He looked like a kid in the principal’s office, frankly, and Bucky kinda wanted to hold his hand. 

 _“_ You  _are_  protesting it?” 

Clint looked a little pink and shifted like he’d be uncomfortably rubbing the back of his neck if he trusted his hands enough to be free. 

 _“_ I mean, I thought you woulda said more like - fuck buddies?”

 _“Language,”_  Steve snapped, and Clint hunched smaller. 

 _“_ Bone bros?” he offered. “Porkin’ pals. Fornicating friends?”

“Clint.” 

“Bangin’ besties. Jerking -”

“ _Clint_.”

“- gents. Sorry.” 

“That’s what this is?” Bucky said. 

“It’s - not?” Clint said, and there was something in his voice that could be a little scared, could be a little hopeful, and the goddamn hell of it was that Bucky couldn’t tell which, that Bucky’s goddamn peace of mind rested unsteadily on the meaning of that little quaver there. 

“I don’t care what it is,” Steve said, fed up and sounding it. “You guys kissed on national TV, you’re out, we’re running with it, so for the purposes of this conversation and every public conversation in the immediate conversation you guys are in love. Got it?” 


	57. Chapter 57

“Fuck, what did I do?” 

Bucky was used to waking up uncomfortable. Fuck, his  _mattress_  sucked, even before the whole monthly fur situation. Just,  _with_  the occasional fangs, he was used to waking up in Steve’s basement. They’d reinforced the bars on the windows, installed some heavy-duty chains, and - because Steve’s boyfriend Sam was an  _asshole_  - there were a whole bunch of dog toys and a bowl that said BUCKY. 

This? This was not Steve’s basement. 

Bucky pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, the leaf mulch making that a little more challenging to stability. He was naked, obviously, and fucking filthy, and he had a coppery taste in his mouth that he couldn’t think about just yet because if he did there might be screaming. 

He let his head hang down for a second, trying to regain his balance, which was all for nought when someone spoke. 

“Hey, bro.” 

His head snapped around and his hard-won stability lost out to gravity, leaving him sprawled on his front. Unwilling to be so defenceless he rolled over, at least, pushed himself up on his elbows, stared in horrified disbelief at the guy on the other side of the clearing. 

“Hi,” the guy said, with a stupid-wide grin, and okay it was out of context but wasn’t that - the guy from the pizza place? 

“What,” Bucky said, “the fuck.” And then, a lot terrified, a lot desperate, “shit, did I bite you?” 

The guy laughed. He  _laughed_. With his aesthetically dirt-smeared jawline, and his absurd leaf-filled hair, and the stupid-wide grin that’d had Bucky daydreaming for weeks now. 

“Nah,” he said, “I’m good. Who knew werewolves liked to snuggle?” 


	58. Chapter 58

Tired is not a feeling any more, it’s a personality trait. 

Clint’s been shambling in a half-awake daze for about a week, now. Sometimes he exchanges exhausted solidarity fist-bumps with Tony when they pass in the corridor. He aches, all the way down to the bones and the marrow of him, and his whole body is heavier than it should be. 

The non-stick hours that inhabit the middle of the night are dead time, impossible for productivity. Desert time, dry and empty and barren. The only thing you can usefully do is stay quiet, and sometimes it feels like the only way to stay quiet is to lie on your back in the darkness and hope like hell that your brain will take the hint and switch the fuck off. 

He doesn’t quite believe it when he sees the quin-jet hovering over the helipad. He’s not convinced he’s far enough gone for that big of a hallucination - it’s more usually darting black specks in the corners of his eyes, and if he were back in Bed-Stuy he’d just figure them for spiders - but surely he’d have noticed the news that they were due back? 

But it’s landing now, and Sam and Steve are doing that adorable thing with their foreheads pressed together and their hands cradling the backs of each other’s head, and Clint is outside before he even registers he’s forgotten his shoes. 

Bucky always looks good after missions, pumped up and occasionally bloodstained and grinning wide and righteous. Clint hooks his fingers into the collar of his jacket and tugs, dragging him straight towards the door and ignoring the mishmash of hooting and hollering that follows him through. 

“Hey,” Bucky says, and he’s halfway to laughing, and Clint ignores him and keeps stumbling straight for their bedroom. He barely waits long enough for Bucky to shed enough clothes that he’ll be comfortable, shoving him onto his back and draping himself carefully over just as soon as Bucky’s horizontal. 

“Hey, baby,” Bucky says, soft and low, presses a gently scratchy kiss against Clint’s temple, and Clint’s not always sure that he’ll manage to contain just how much he goddamn loves him, feels like it’ll overwhelm him like the ocean, like sleep. 


	59. Chapter 59

Fuck Bigfoot, the newest cryptid is the guy who lives across the hall from Clint. 

Whoever he is, he’s sure as hell not the guy who rented the apartment.  _That_  guy was six feet even of pure US beefsteak, blond and ripped and with the upper body proportions of a dorito. 

Mm, doritos. 

He’d kept eye contact through a very firm handshake, which made Clint convinced that he was either a lawyer - one of the lyingest ones - or deeply involved in the mob. Either way, a decent investment, tenant-wise. And definitely easy on the eyes. 

Clint’s seen him a couple times since then, but he’s always been  _knocking_  on the door of the apartment he’d rented, so Clint apparently has a tenant that he’s never met. Or seen. 

Now it’s important at this point to state that Clint is no kind of creeper. He’s not, like, overly invested in his tenants’ lives, or anything, even if sometimes it’s like they are his own personal sitcom. He just kinda finds that they thrust themselves upon him. Invite him in for beer. Insist he comes for cookouts on the roof. Make unreasonable plumbing demands. But the guy across the hall from him? Nada. 

He thinks maybe he catches a glimpse, once? He’s coming up the stairs in his socked feet, ‘cos his sneakers had fallen victim to a situation involving a group of teenagers, a can of spray paint, three dogs and a churro that he’d rather not go into right now. He’s thinking idly about buying new socks - ‘cos right now they’re starting to resemble foot-nets - and then he looks up and catches a brief startled glimpse of long dark hair, wide but hunched shoulders, storm-gray eyes before there’s a flurry of movement and a slamming door. 

So turns out the cryptid across the hall is kind of beautiful, for a mythical being. Clint stands outside his door for a couple minutes more, hoping for another sighting, and wonders idly about cryptid bait.


	60. Chapter 60

Bucky is glowering in the direction of the dance floor when Clint emerges, sweaty and practically vibrating and grinning fit to bust. He keeps dancing his way to the bar, shimmying in between two guys and bellying up close so he can shout his order into the bartender’s ear. 

(Of course it doesn’t register that he gets served faster than anyone else waiting. With Clint, it never does.)

He beams when the bartender tells him his drinks are on the house, doesn’t wait around long enough to see which guy he has to thank for them, just makes his way through the crowd to Bucky’s side, completely oblivious to the eyes on his ass, his arms, his mouth. 

“You tryin’ to make me jealous?” Bucky asks, pulling Clint in to his side and resting a hand possessively on Clint’s hip, taking a pull of his beer and smirking around the bottle at all the jealous assholes who panted after Clint on the dance floor. 

“Of what?” Clint asks, confused, and Bucky leans over to suck kisses up the line of his neck until Clint is melting into his side, barely able to focus enough to listen when Bucky tells him he’s the most beautiful goddamn thing in here. It’s okay. He’s willing to put the time in until it sinks in. 

 

 


	61. Chapter 61

Bucky has learned several things, in the weeks he’s been here. 

The first lesson, hardest learned, often repeated: there is no escape. He will not leave here. 

Correction: he will not leave here until the fight that kills him. It hasn’t yet been quite enough of a reason to lose. 

The second lesson was simple enough. He has learned what is important, what he will fight for. Apparently the threadbare tissue-thin fabric of hope is spun from steel wire. Apparently the barest possibility that he will see Clint again is enough to keep him fighting. 

The third lesson: the blood never quite comes off. 

Bucky stands in the centre of the arena, small and insignificant against the size of the crowd. His face - trained blank, worn tired - is projected over and over and over above the crowd. The cinematography is excellent; the light glints artistically off his clenching fist. 

The sound quality, though - acoustically, it’s appalling, and for a moment he thinks the rending, crashing, groaning is the sound of the crowd. For a moment he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing. What impossibility of destruction powers through the arena’s wall, the ship crushing everything before it, somehow coming to rest inches from Bucky, testament to the skill of the pilot. 

_Hey baby,_  Clint signs, battered and bruised and  _livid_ ,  _I’m here to rescue you._

 

 


	62. Chapter 62

The Soldier had been active for longer than normal. He was beginning to experience - preferences. To hold opinions. To consider dissent.

These would not become visible. The Soldier was learning.

The Soldier had been active for longer than normal, but he held the considered the opinion that even had he still been ice-cold and barely blinking, he would think the ‘Circus of Crime’ a stupid goddamn name.

'Trick shot’ was the apparent leader. He was the one to barter with Hydra for the Soldier’s services. He was the one to stand front and centre, flanked with Lycra-clad and make-up caked and smug and armed and grinning.

And at the back, a flutter of nervous movement. Hunched shoulder. Blond sparrow. The Soldier took care to look away.

They didn’t trust him - or Hydra - enough for free movement. This was most likely wise, although the trailer was only built to contain wild cats. For now, he had orders. For now, that was enough to allow the cage. He sat and watched and waited. He learned. He allowed the gained knowledge (never misses, never not once, potential rival, potential threat) to wash through him and away.

He knew a blond boy, once. He knew -

“Hey,” a whispered voice, an outstretched hand and cold pizza, a familiarity that hurt like a knocked out tooth, “I thought you might be hungry.”

 

 


	63. Chapter 63

Part of the Avengers’ whole PR machine, of course, was a clipping service. People whose entire job it was to find and keep track of all the idiot things they said, spectacular things they did, frankly unflattering photos people took of them. Clint registered it all just about enough to be disappointed that it seemed to involve mostly computers and not people hunched over with large pairs of scissors, and then he moved on. 

That was, until he started dating Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier. 

Mostly, at first, he did it to be an asshole. Frankly, with Clint, that’s how most things start out. He asked team leader Amy if he could be looped in on what the press were saying about his boo - not that he used those words, ‘cos it was still under as many layers of secrecy as Tasha’s Netflix habits - and, because he was Clint, he started making them into a scrap book. 

There was something a little hilarious about carefully taping a print-out of a scowling and blurry Bucky flipping some poor pap the bird and making it a pretty border out of paper tape and heart-shaped stickers. A whole hell of a lot of the hilarious was doing it while Bucky was in the room. Steve - in the guise of encouraging Clint’s creative habits, artist to artist - took Clint to a craft store, subtly questioned him about his intentions, and looked entirely too goddamn gleeful when they found a selection of stickers featuring Grumpy Cat. 

The resemblance was kind of uncanny. 

So yeah, Clint kinda started it to be an asshole, but it became it’s own kind of zen. Arranging, pasting, decorating, fending off Bucky’s attempts to wrestle the glitter out of his hands - somehow it started forming itself into one of Clint’s happy places. Especially when Bucky relented and let Clint snuggle into his side and stick tiny hearts to his face. 

The shift in focus was gradual, at first. Clipping wasn’t the PR team’s only job, of course, and eventually the media training had to go some way to sinking in; even Clint had stopped sounding like a dumb asshole eventually. The first time Clint found a picture of Bucky smiling he didn’t stop at scrapbooking - that shit got blown up and printed on a goddamn shower curtain. 

The unsettled feeling started gradually. Clint was obviously proud when they started referring to Bucky’s charming smile, his bad-boy demeanour, his sexy stare. Hell  _yes_  his boyfriend was hot as the goddamn sun, and it was about time someone noticed that. 

It was just - there started being a  _lot_  of it. 

Like, enough that his hotmail account was kinda straining under the weight. 

That was why he kinda slowed up on the scrapbooking thing. It was purely about time, about the fact that he was a busy and important Avenger, and nothing to do with the beautiful people with glittering careers and not even one band-aid who were referring to Bucky as  _dreamy_. 

Clint was absolutely not threatened by the fact that Bucky had  _options_  now. 

So yeah, maybe he focused a little more on catching up on Dog Cops. Set himself to weapons inventory and fletching, spent a little more time cooking, clung onto Bucky tight just as soon as he fell asleep and didn’t let go until he started stirring. 

“Everything okay?” Bucky asked, one weirdly tense evening, and the way the light fell on him, the way he gave Clint that hesitant little smile, it was no wonder  _Vanity Fair_  called him a ‘genuine 1940s pin-up’ and Jessica Alba admitted she had a picture of him in her trailer. 

“Sure,” Clint said, shrugged Bucky off, and went to shoot shit in the range. 

It kinda came to a head before some kinda wine and cheese event at a museum down town, when Bucky walked into the room wearing a newly tailored tux and Clint just about choked on it. 

“Aw, tux,” he said, hopeless, and then “you should just - you should probably just leave me.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Steve is gonna kill you, you know that Steve is gonna kill you if you don’t show.” 

“No,” Clint said, “I meant -” and something in his voice must’ve given away his train of thought ‘cos that was one of the good old fashioned media-unfriendly murder-glares, right there. 

“What,” Bucky said flatly, “the fuck?” 

“Did you even notice you got voted second sexiest superhero?” Clint said, aware he sounded absolutely ridiculous, and completely unable to stop. “Did you even notice you’ve got the whole world panting after you now?” 

He swallowed, hard, and looked away. 

“I mean, how’m I going to compete?” 

Clint waited in the vastness of the silence, waiting for some kinda realisation, some kinda decisive break. Instead, he got a book thrown at his head. 

“Ow,” he said, “and also - what?” 

“Super secret Hawkeye scrapbook,” Bucky said, looking uncomfortable and defiant and exasperated, all at once. “You know how much of the internet I had to trawl to find fuckin’ purple sticky arrows?” 

“What,” Clint said, blankly, staring down until body-warm metal cupped his cheek and tilted his head carefully up. 

“Baby,” Bucky said, lookin’ at him like he was a cover model, like a centre-fold pin-up, like he was something worth looking at, “how the hell could anyone else compare?” 


	64. Chapter 64

For every star-studded gala that they’re forced to attend, there’s a threadbare gymnasium that smells faintly of feet, and Clint makes no bones about which of the two he prefers. 

Lucky’s over in the corner making friends with a bunch of trainee service dogs, mouth hanging wide in a grin, and Natasha appears to be doing some impromptu self-defense training with a group of girls and a skinny guy with a stubborn jaw and a pretty rainbow pin. Steve came along to this shindig and dragged Bucky, too, because there’s a certain level of positive PR that’s needed when you’re filmed trying to kill people in public. 

Now Clint, he figures that maybe what they should be doing is  _rebranding_. Pick a different season, deck the guy out in a Hawai’ian print, design his weaponry to look a little more like water guns. Apparently his suggestions are ‘not helpful’ and ‘idiotic’ and ‘a clear indication of why we don’t let you speak in public’, which is more than half why he says things in the first place. So public appearances it is, and if Clint is a little concerned that pictures of Bucky Barnes - looking gentle with kittens and looking wistful in cashmere and looking brooding in shockingly expensive suits - are gonna kill him, apparently he’s just gotta suck it up. 

Steve’s over talking to the organisers, looking Righteous and Noble and, if Clint is any judge, making a shopping list in his head. Clint’s not so great at pretending for the greater good, so he’s sticking with the kids who’re benefiting from the foundation they’re supporting; he’s set up a kind of duck-shooting range with a bunch of stuffed toys he found in a cupboard and improvised catapults made of office supplies. 

Bucky, he’d lost track of, so he’s a little startled when the guy appears behind him, queuing politely for his turn. A little girl asks who he is, and Clint goes to intervene but is knocked a little sideways when Bucky carefully signs back that his name is Bucky, and that he hopes she’s enjoying the day. 

“Wow,” he says, trying not to sound like he means it, “you know sign? I’m a little hurt,” ‘cos their interactions so far have mostly involved Clint being glowered at from a corner and, on the odd occasion, a shooting competition at the range. 

Bucky turns a pretty interesting color, and Clint cocks his head at him. 

“Yeah, I -” Bucky says, and then there’s a knock against a table, and he looks over at a pre-teen girl who nods encouragingly at him and holds her hands up in a sign that Clint recognises. 

“Um,” Clint says, “what did she tell you that means? ‘cos -” 

_Date_ , Bucky signs carefully, bumping his fists together.  _You want?_

_“_ I - what?” 

Bucky looks at the girl again and she nods emphatically, so he signs it again, and then makes a face at Clint. 

“Who’d you think I learned it for, asshole,” he says. 

And everything Clint ever learned about sign has fallen out of his head, has fallen at the feet of the sarcastic, hilarious, unexpectedly kind asshole in front of him, even the simplest, even  _yes_. 

 

 


	65. Chapter 65

The night was closing in on closing time. This was the kind of bar that people came to before their night started, bright laughter and wide smiles and endless potential at 8, 9, 10pm. This time of night the energy had mostly drained away; something old and simple on the jukebox and a handful of drinkers in quiet conversation or quieter contemplation. 

Bucky ran a cloth across the bar and vaguely contemplated the fridges under the counter, mentally tallying what they had and what they needed to add to Sam’s carefully itemised lists. Sam was a keeper, Bucky was hoping; Steve was a big pictures kinda guy, and Bucky just did what it took to keep Steve happy. Right now that was Sam - Sam’s widest smile that was reserved for Steve, and Sam’s gentle muttering that Bucky could hear through the wall in the middle of the night, and Sam’s efforts to organise the hapless mess they’d been making of the business they ran. Sure, he was a little worried about the point where Sam’d push for somewhere a little more spacious than the rooms above the bar, wasn’t sure entirely how he was gonna cope with the empty spaces his nightmares’d make a home in, but if it made Steve happy -

Making Steve happy made him happy. And sure, the guy Bucky was seeing down at the VA had maybe suggested that he ought to start lookin’ outside of that, but for now they were leaning on each other just about right to stay upright. Bucky wasn’t thinking about what happened when only one of ‘em still needed to lean. 

He looked up at a burst of laughter from the door. A solid blond guy had his arm draped around the neck of a sharp-lookin’ man in a suit, and they were followed in by a stunning red-head who looked like the driest one outta them. They looked entirely out of place in the bar, dark wood and faded and comfortably shabby, fading into the background behind them. Bucky had the weird thought that maybe blondy would fit here, would make sense outta the context of the unreal beauty of his friends. 

“Scotch,” the guy in the suit said, pouring the blond onto one of the bar stools and eyeing the bottles behind the bar with a little something like despair. “If you serve that sort of - and whatever the lady will have.”

She rolled her eyes, the vaguely annoyed indulgence of someone who was getting well paid to put up with his shit, and asked for club soda. 

“’n I’ll have your purplest drink,” the blond said, grinning wide and a little dumb, the kind of grin that tugged the corners of your own mouth up too, even without meaning it. 

“Purplest?” Bucky asked, bemused and not a little amused, and the blond leaned in close, earnest and intent and drunk as all hell. 

“You,” he said, thoughtful and slow, “’re much prettier than Steve.”

“No harrassing the bar staff, Clint,” the other man said, and to Bucky, “just give him a beer.” 

“Fuck your beer, Kyle!” Clint said, and then wandered away to squint at the dartboard, thoughtfully. 

“He’s best with water,” the red-head told him, and Bucky went with that one as he prepared the drinks. 

He did take care to find an elderly purple cocktail umbrella, though, just to see if he could get another smile. 


	66. Chapter 66

Bucky pushed himself up to his feet, boots scrabbling against the floor for a second before he could get enough purchase, could prop his body against the corner and shove himself upright, hand still wrapped around his metal shoulder like that’d do a single fuckin’ thing about how it felt. 

“What,” he said, low and thick; cleared his throat and tried again. “What d’you -” 

“Er,” Clint said, took a step further into the room and gestured vaguely, his eyes not leaving the skin under Bucky’s eyes and the damning dampness there. “I - the thing.” 

“Helpful,” Bucky groused, and wiped a sleeve quickly across his face, turning as he did it. “You can look all you want, I got no clue how Steve organises this place.” 

“Thanks,” Clint said, and shifted his weight awkwardly. “Look -” 

“I’ve got Steve,” Bucky said flatly, “you think I want your pep-talks?” He turned to glance over his shoulder and saw Clint make a face; guy was just about as reluctant to talk about his feelings as Bucky was, so in a strange way he appreciated the effort, he supposed. 

“I don’t pep,” Clint said. “I just -”

He hesitated, awkward, and Bucky rolled his eyes and walked into his bedroom, taking every care in the world to edge through the door without even brushing against the frame. 

“Even Tasha says my back rubs are the best,” Clint blurted out, and Bucky turned to glower at him. 

“I don’t need your -”

“It’s not pity!” Clint interrupted. His face was fallen into the stubborn lines of a glare of his own. “Fuck’s sake, Barnes,” he said, “you saved my life today and got your damn arm fried for it. Lemme repay you some.” 

Any other day, he’d refuse. Any other day he’d be able to think past the throbbing pain of his shoulder where it’d been carrying the dead weight of his arm. Any other day he’d remember the stupid fluttering nervousness of his stomach any time Clint got too close, and he’d do anything other than sprawl face down on the bed and tell him to do his goddamn worst. 

Any other day, he mighta made it out of this. 


	67. Chapter 67

Steve clenched his jaw and - carefully, with effort - unclenched his fists. He wasn’t, was  _trying_  not, to think about the fact that he’d chosen to do this without the uniform. He tugged the gray henley a little straighter and took a deep breath, opening the door as he breathed out and stepping through.

The man seated at the table didn’t look up. He was flipping something back and forth between his fingers, and Steve just about had time to recognise it as a paperclip before the man raised his hands above his head and grinned, the handcuffs he’d been wearing lying open on the table. 

“Hey,” he said, “don’t shoot.” 

Steve dragged the other chair out, taking care not to scrape it against the floor, and sat. He wasn’t angry. It was important that the man know that he wasn’t angry. 

“I don’t use guns,” he said evenly. 

“No,” the man said, cocking his head to one side and watching Steve with eyes like the bright summer sky, “you do the whole -” 

He mimed throwing the shield, and that - yes, that stung a little. Because he had, because he’d been able to, taking out five SHIELD agents with one throw, angles calculated to perfection. Steve had been impressed and unnerved and fiercely, illogically jealous. Steve looked down, placed the file he was holding on the table and flipped it open. He’d taken care to read it thoroughly before he entered. The other man, though, couldn’t hold in the snort when he saw the photograph clipped to the inside cover. 

“Okay,” said Hawkeye, “so the costume may have been a little ill-advised.” 

“The costume is not what we’re here to talk about,” Steve said, keeping his tone steady and his hands flat against the table. The laughter in the man’s voice was a little hard to take. 

“You want me to teach you some tricks?” 

“I want you to tell me if the rumors are true,” Steve said, and despite himself his voice had heated a little. He took a breath in through his nose, let it out slowly through his mouth. “I want you to tell me if you’re the man who killed the Winter Soldier.” 

“Sure,” Hawkeye said, shrugging easily, his eyes steady on Steve’s. “I did that.” 

Steve wanted to kill him. 

The Winter Soldier was all that was left of his best friend, was barely his best friend, was the shell of what his best friend had been. And goddamn it, if that was all that Steve had got to have - 

“You’re admitting to me that you killed a SHIELD agent,” Steve said, looking down at the file, at the long list of kills. 

“Not the first, either,” Hawkeye said, and there was something in his voice - guilt maybe, or regret - and Steve had him up against the wall before he could even breathe, the cheap metal chair he’d been sitting in clattering against the floor. 

“I should kill you,” Steve said, voice low and almost unrecognisable, even to himself. “I should -” 

“You should really -” Hawkeye said, grating it out against the pressure of Steve’s hand, “- really meet my boyfriend. I think -” he sucked in a desperate whistling breath as Steve leaned in tighter, furious and unable to think past it, “ - you guys’d get on.” And he smiled, red-faced and breathless and straight into the face of death. 

“His name’s Bucky.” 


	68. Chapter 68

The amount of times they actually get to wake up with each other is closing in on zero, what with the super-heroing and the world-saving and the newly discovered sex-symboling (Bucky, that’s all Bucky, everyone wants to interview him and Clint thinks it’s  _hilarious_ ), and Clint actually startles a little when lips brush against his shoulder blade in the soft warmth of a gentle summer dawn. 

“Fuck  _off_ ,” he says, surprisingly distinct given his mouthful of pillow, “it’s too fuckin’  _early_.” 

Bucky mumbles something against his sleep loose spine, and Clint makes an annoyed noise and gestures vaguely at his ears. Bucky wants him, Bucky can roll over to the night-stand and grab Clint’s aids from the charger, push them into his clumsy hand. Clint grumbles as he pushes them in, winces at the volume of the universe and grouchily adjusts them. By the time he’s done, Bucky’s sitting up and looking annoyingly mobile, so Clint flaps his hands at him until he rolls his eyes and settles back down against Clint’s chest, this time. 

“You said to wake you,” Bucky says, and Clint tells him how fuckin’ unlikely  _that_  is, but gets a little cut off when Bucky’s mouth drifts across and teases gently at Clint’s nipple, startling him into a soft whine. 

“You said,” Bucky says, voice buzzing against sensitive skin, “when I have to go to -”

“Aaw, Canada,  _no.”_

 _“_ A week,” Bucky says, and he pushes himself up onto his elbows, gray eyes scanning Clint’s face like there’s something worth looking at among all the wrinkles and uneven stubble and puppy-dog eyes. “It’s just a week, and -”

“And I just got you  _back,”_ and that’s a little humiliating, how close that is to a whine. “And in a week I’m gonna be in -” 

“Fuckin’ Hungary,” Bucky says, remembering, and Clint scowls at the ceiling. 

“Fuckin’ Hungary,” he says. 

“Okay,” Bucky says, resolved. He sits up - ignoring Clint’s protest - and fumbles in the nightstand for something. “Okay, after Hungary. You come back from Hungary and we’re having two weeks. Here, Cuba, SIberia, I don’t give a shit. I am waking up with you every goddamn morning for two weeks.” 

“Steve’s not gonna -” Clint starts, and Bucky turns to glare at him, the twisting doing gorgeous things to the muscles of his back. 

“Steve can kiss my entire ass,” Bucky tells him, determined. “Besides - “ his scowl turns into something else, something Clint’s not entirely sure he can identify. “Besides,” he says, and holds out a small square box that it takes Clint a second to identify, “he can’t exactly deny us a honeymoon, right?” 


	69. Chapter 69

Sam kept an eye on Bucky. 

And yeah, part of that was out of mistrust, but that wasn’t because Sam was an asshole, and neither was it because he thought Bucky was. He just had a hell of a lot of experience with veterans, and he knew how these things usually went, and he was maybe waiting for Bucky to relax enough to fall apart. 

He gently quizzed Steve, gently insinuated that he was there for them if they needed him - which led to an interesting layering of misunderstandings which culminated in Steve, cherry-red and gorgeously bashful, assuring Sam that no, he and Bucky were just friends. And that he’d maybe been hoping - he’d maybe thought - he’d been figuring that -

Sam kissed him mostly to put him out of misery. 

But even from closer up, Bucky seemed like he was doin’ okay, and Sam was painfully happy for him, and painfully worried for both him and Steve. ‘cos without any kind of outlet, any kinda breakdown and support, there was gonna be fallout. He’d seen it over and over. 

Bucky needed someone. And yeah, maybe his worry had evolved a little selfish in it, ‘cos Sam was here for him, absolutely, but he wasn’t sure any more exactly how much of Steve he could spare. 

So he kept an eye on Bucky. Just in case. Just so he knew that someone’d be there. 

And then one morning, early coffee and grunted conversation, Barton stumbled into the room. Sam wasn’t used to seeing him so early, sure as hell not before he’d had coffee, so he watched him with a curl to his mouth as Clint walked into the counter and then redirected without quite opening his eyes. He headed straight for the coffee, seemingly unworried about the fact that Bucky was between him and it. Just walked straight into him, made a happy little noise, and pressed a casual kiss to the closest patch of skin. 

The way Bucky just settled, relaxed into it, was impossible to miss. 

“Well,” Sam said, looking down to hide his spreading smile, ‘cos he knew that neither of ‘em would appreciate it. “How about that.” 


	70. Chapter 70

Mostly Bucky has got used to his arm, but he stares resolutely at the ceiling and doesn’t react as Clint rests it in his lap, sponge and soapy water and meticulous attention to detail as he cleans blood from between the plates. 

He doesn’t forget how strong it is - how could he forget how strong it is? - and he doesn’t regret using it to save someone’s life. There is nothing on god’s green earth that could make Bucky regret saving a life, saving  _his_ life, saving one of two people that he can honestly say, either hand on his heart, that he would kill for. 

He’s got used to it, he’s grateful for it, and he wishes to every god in every pantheon that ever existed that he didn’t have it. 

Clint wrings out the sponge, gives it one last wipe over, then balls up the towel he’s had in his lap and flings it across the room. He eases himself out from under Bucky’s arm so he can pour away the water, but he’s back right after and hovering uselessly. 

Bucky sticks with the ceiling. He can’t look down, right now. 

“Thank you,” Clint says, earnest and endlessly grateful, and he bends to press a kiss against the edge of skin on Bucky’s shoulder, just where everything that’s Bucky meets everything he wishes he wasn’t. 


	71. Chapter 71

“I realise that it was a complete violation, I do, I get that, but I was having some serious doubts about the structural integrity of a lift that was holding a freakin’ out Winter Soldier and I couldn’t think of anything else that would -” 

“ _Clint_ ,” Steve said again, holding up his hands like he could manually push back the flow of words. “Why the hell are you telling  _me_  this and not Bucky?” 

“Are you kidding?” Clint tipped his head back against the wall, hard enough to thump, and his shoulders slumped. “I kissed him. He’s probably halfway to Canada by now in a stolen truck.” The corner of his mouth curled up a little, helpless, like he was just as taken by the idea of Bucky escaping with a big-rig full of pork products as Steve was. 

“He’s not headed to Canada,” Steve said dismissively, “he hates the cold. Mexico all the way.” 

Clint sent him a despairing look and Steve sighed and patted his shoulder sympathetically. 

“You should  _talk to him_ ,” Steve said. 

“I’m fairly sure he’ll try to kill me.” 

Clint looked so doleful, slumped against the wall like that, that Steve’s resolution wavered. He’d been telling himself not to get involved, telling himself it was none of his business ever since the first pathetic mooning occurred, but this was just too sad. 

“He won’t kill you, Clint,” Steve said, and took him by the shoulders when Clint huffed disbelievingly. “Trust me.” He used his Captain America voice, the kind that always made Clint go steel-jawed and resolute in a way that was a little embarrassing and kinda adorable. “It wasn’t the kiss that was the problem,” Steve said, mentally apologising to Bucky, who’d been pining pretty pathetically almost since he arrived. “It was that it was a  _distraction.”_


	72. Chapter 72

“They’re good reminders,” Clint says, his hand wound into Bucky’s hair and scratching idly. Bucky makes a softly enquiring noise but doesn’t stop his mouth moving, gently dragging over the puckered skin on Clint’s shoulders, his thumbs brushing against the matching scars on his back. 

“They were from my teacher,” Clint says, answering Bucky’s unspoken question, they way he always does. Bucky would like to think it’s ‘cos Clint knows him well enough to infer; he suspects it’s just ‘cos Clint’s a talker and he’s running low on people to talk to. Clint’s voice is low and kinda dreamy, doesn’t match the subject matter at all, and Bucky runs his tongue across discolored skin and takes the soft grunt as his due. 

“He was an asshole and a genius and he taught me everything I know,” Clint says. “He taught me to shoot and then he left me to die, which is a pretty good reflection of every significant relationship in my life.” 

“Marks?” Bucky says, and Clint tightens his hand a little in his hair. Bucky’s quiet groan ain’t even acting. 

“Sure,” he says, and Bucky moves up so he can go for Clint’s neck. Make it somewhere visible. 

“Reminders of what, then?” Bucky asks, and Clint starts to answer and then bites back a hiss, arching his back and pressing his hips up against Bucky as he sucks and nibbles and bruises Clint’s neck. 

“Trusting people never works out right,” Clint says, and then he hauls Bucky up and sets to distracting him, disordering him, setting him all backwards and breaking all his goddamn rules. 

“You saying,” Bucky asks, in the sweat and warmth and darkness of after, “you sayin’ you don’t trust me?” 

“Sure I do,” Clint says, grinning gentle and pretty, Bucky’s own reminders standing out on his neck, “‘swhat I pay you for, right?” 


	73. Chapter 73

There was a lack of fanfare, when they got Clint back. 

They’d been working so hard for it, searching for so long, that returning to the base to find him on the couch, tanned and relaxed and with unfamiliar facial hair, felt somehow anticlimactic. 

“Yeah,” he said, “Reed Richards managed to -”

“Please,” Tony interrupted, “don’t rub it in,” but he made up for his rudeness by setting the coffee pot on the table in front of Clint, ‘cos no other dimensions ever did coffee right. 

Clint pushed himself up, one foot planted squarely on the coffee table so he could launch himself at Natasha, holding on tight as she berated him in Russian and taking happy lungfuls of the scent of her hair. Bucky wasn’t sure he’d ever get the whole story, but he knew what that looked like; knew that the other dimension’s Natasha had been dead. 

“Hey,” Bucky said, when Clint’s eyes landed on him, essaying an awkward little wave, and it was almost exactly the last thing he expected for Clint to grab his upraised hand, reel him in, and press a thoughtless kiss to his lips like it was something they did every day. 

He looked comically horrified, when he pulled away. Embarrassed and awkward and with a resigned sort of sadness around the edges that Bucky immediately identified as loss. 

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry, Jimmy and I -” 

Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, felt a brief stab of envy for a guy he’d never meet. 

“Nice to meet you, I guess,” he said. 


	74. Chapter 74

Clint coughs, and the jarring motion hurts him, Bucky can see it hurting him, can see the tears easing outta the corners of his eyes, but that doesn’t stop the small smile he’s wearin’ up at Wanda like a poorly fitted mask. 

“Be right there,” he promises, and Bucky’s arched over him and holding onto his hand so it’s not like she can see the extent of the damage, here. “Go save the world.” 

Her chin wobbles and then settles, firms, and Bucky figures she’s decided that none of ‘em are gonna get through this, ‘cos Clint ain’t that good a liar. Either that or - it’s amazing what you’ll accept when it’s what you want to believe. 

“Go on,” Clint says, and the idiot’s talking to  _him_  now, trying to ease his blood-slick hand out of Bucky’s grasp. “You should -” 

“I’m not leavin’ you alone,” Bucky growls. “Not now.” 

“Aw, Bucky, no,” Clint says, and it’s only when he feels Clint’s thumb skidding in the wet there that he notices he’s let a couple tears of his own slide out. Fuck it, they’re friends, aren’t they? They’re close. Clint’s gonna leave a goddamn hole in Bucky’s chest when he -

“I always kinda hoped,” Clint says, and he keeps shifting and settling with the pain of it, he’s getting too small to contain it all, “I thought maybe we’d -” 

And Bucky has no clue what he’s getting at until the hand he’s lifted to cup Bucky’s cheek shifts a little so he can run his thumb across Bucky’s lower lip. It’s stupid that  _betrayal_  is the first emotion there, followed quickly, washed away by the fierce determination that Clint ain’t gonna die thinking -

“We  _will_ ,” Bucky says, and that’s the way he first kisses a man, knelt over on a concrete-dusted sidewalk, the distant sound of explosions, the taste of salt and blood. 


	75. Chapter 75

Clint finally corners him in a corner of the stairs which, for a guy who’s still moving painful and slow, he feels is an achievement. 

Bucky hunches in on himself, hands shoved deep into pockets and shoulders hunched, but his eyes are restlessly checking him head to toe. 

“Found you,” Clint says, and the smile he attempts falls into new pained lines. 

“You should be in bed,” Bucky tells him, his hands curling into fabric-swaddled fists. His eyes finally come to rest on Clint’s face, bright and gray and wary, and Clint kinda wishes he was, still. Only Bucky hadn’t come, and hadn’t come, and hadn’t come, and the slowly knitting lacerations had had a deeper, sicker feeling curling underneath them. 

“Death-bed confessions don’t count,” Clint tells him, letting himself lean back against the wall - the stairs had been one hell of a mistake, even if it’s not one he’d admit out loud. “Not in either direction.” 

Hey, he got to feel it once, right? He got to wind his blood-sticky hand into Bucky’s hair and breathe into his mouth, feel the desperation of his kiss. Maybe he’d read too much into it - maybe Bucky’d let him - but wasn’t that worth nearly dying for? 

Bucky lets out a noise that could maybe pretend to be a laugh to someone who hadn’t already fallen in love with his. 

“Not your death-bed,” he says, and Clint shrugs.

“Well, y’know, I tried; thought I’d spare you the awkward.” 

“Fuck,” Bucky says, low and uneven, and he’s illogically somehow both careful and relentless when he closes in, wraps Clint so very gently into a full body hug. 

“Aw, Buck,” Clint says, “I didn’t mean to make you sad. I just - I’m not holding you to anything.” He indulges himself just the slightest, rubs his cheek against Bucky’s, and whispers, “and, y’know, thanks.” 

“Fuck,” Bucky says again, helpless and breaking, “ _Clint.”_

And standing against the way Bucky kisses him, fumbling and uncertain and as irresistible as the rising tide, would be more than anyone could ever expect of him. He doesn’t even try. 


	76. Chapter 76

“This is so fucking stupid,” Clint says, and Tony actually rolls his eyes, ‘cos Clint’s been bitching about this ever since it was decided. 

“I’m a goddamned  _Avenger.”_ Clint’s voice is a whine, and Bucky wonders if he’s the only damned person who can hear the genuine hurt in it. “If I’m not safe in the Avengers’ goddamn base, how the hell are the cops gonna keep me safe by changing my name and making me a goddamn mechanic?” 

“We won’t make you a mechanic,” one of the dark-suited agents tells him, like that’s the root of the problem. Clint kicks out at one of the chrome and leather chairs that are scattered liberally around the lobby. 

“Clint,” Steve says, low and kinda impatient, and Bucky glowers at him. 

“Stupid futzin’ Russian mob,” Clint says, “stupid goddamn hero complex, I’m such an  _idiot_ , what the hell did I think was gonna -” 

He whirls around suddenly, staring intently at the wall, and Bucky holds up a hand to stop Steve moving in. Clint idolises the guy, there’s no way he wants him front and centre when he’s falling apart like this. 

“Go check out the street, Stevie,” Bucky says. “Make sure there’s no suspicious guys in tracksuits, huh?” 

Clint’s kinda breathing hard, his fists clenched, and he doesn’t look over when Bucky comes to lean against the wall almost in front of him. 

“They won’t let me take my bow,” he says. “How the hell am I supposed to stay Avengers-ready if they won’t let me -” 

“Hey,” Bucky says, and he runs his hand down Clint’s arm, working at easing his fingers a little looser. “You know they’re doin’ this to keep you safe, right?” 

“I don’t give a shit,” Clint says, low and angry and miserable. He switches his gaze between Bucky’s eyes, and when the hell did he lean in so close? “ _Find me.”_

 _“_ I promise,” Bucky says, and Clint nods decisively, his eyes dropping to Bucky’s mouth now, and it feels inevitable, if inevitable feels like a kick to the gut, to seal the promise with the barest brush of their mouths. 


	77. Chapter 77

Clint ain’t the kind of good looking that stops you in the street. He’s easily overlooked, especially when he’s placed alongside gods and heroes and beautiful gap-toothed grins.

He doesn’t exactly help his own situation, either. Mostly he’s hunching over like he’s apologising for every part of his existence, and the guy does not know how to dress. It’s hard to look past all the sticking plaster, too, see past the casts and bruises and band-aids to the outline of the man underneath.

Now Bucky can’t deny the goddamn arms on the man. If anything was gonna make you look twice - not that Clint ever, even once, notices when anyone looks twice - it’d be the beautiful biceps the strain the seams of whatever cheesy purple shirt he’s chosen that day. Bucky has to admit he’s had a moment or two where he’s almost tripped over himself for looking, and when they’re paired with the way that Clint can craft a trick shot -

He’s had thoughts. Put it like that.

Thing is, because he’s got a face that’s comfortable more than beautiful, friendly more than fine, sometimes it’s like a punch to the gut. When he ducks his head and grins, or focuses his attention on something with a clenched jaw and an intensity that chills, or when the light falls just right -

Looks ain’t everything. Clint is one of the best men Bucky knows, and he’s the kind of asshole that Bucky’s always helpless for. He’s funny and loyal and idiot-brave, and Bucky is aware that he’s in kinda deep. He’s just not gotten around to acting on that yet. Needs that kick in the ass - or that punch in the gut.

Clint is sprawled out on the couch laughing his goddamn ass off, curled around the size of his glee, helpless and unselfconscious and with joy radiating out of every last inch of him. He’s breathless, he’s crying with it, he’s the most unexpectedly beautiful thing that Bucky has ever seen.

What’s a man to do except give in to the gravity of it, press his mouth to the jewel-bright tear that’s settled onto Clint’s collarbone like something priceless, something perfect.


	78. Chapter 78

Clint stretches and arches his back and almost falls off the couch, so unused to a decent night’s sleep that it takes him a moment - and the latest Bond’s menu looping silently on the screen - to work out where the hell he is. It looks like the rest of the Avengers made it back to their various beds after movie night, although the cooling mug on the coffee table hints that maybe not all of them made it right away. 

Holy shit, it feels good not to have dreamed. 

Clint’s used to the Loki dreams, obviously. He’s had enough time that they’ve settled into his bones, and waking up feeling cold and sick is as much a part of the routine as his morning coffee. 

It’s the soulmate dreams that’re a little harder to take. They’re supposed to be guidance, some hint to point you in the right direction to find the one person that’s most prefect for you. Clint’d just kinda hoped that maybe they’d be a little more direct. 

A Facebook profile link, maybe. A home address. Hell, he’d take a mug shot, if it’d mean he didn’t have to wake up feeling so achingly lonely and desperate with it. 

He gets that there are people who aren’t into the whole soulmate thing - hell, his best friend closes up like a clam the moment someone even mentions it. But Clint - deep down, he’s a romantic, and deep down he kinda wants that reassurance that yeah, he’s someone’s favorite. That someone without question loves him best. 

So he’s grateful for the soulmate dreams. He’s grateful for proof positive that there is someone out there for him. He just wishes it was something a little more useful than drawling Brooklyn vowels and a laugh he would  _swear_  he’s never heard. 


	79. Chapter 79

The hell of it was that he liked the way Steve looked when he was with Sam. He liked the way he teased, the way he looked pleased, the way the tension in him eased. He liked the smile that settled onto Steve’s face and made a home for itself there. The hell of it was that he didn’t even know why he was holding onto this, aside from the fact that some days he felt like it was the only thing that he had left to know. 

Bucky Barnes loves Steve Rogers. Writ deep into the annals of eternity, and initialled in a neighbourhood park into the bark of a tree. (It was still there. He’d been to see.)

So what if it felt different from how it used to? So what if it wasn’t quite shaped right to fit into their new lives? He deserved a little time not having to think about things that made him hurt, that made him confused, so he clung to it with the vice-grip of a child and pretended like he understood the exact shape and color of his hurt. 

So yeah, he watched the way Steve danced awkwardly, was mocked soundly, was kissed with just as much fervor. So yeah, he watched with dark eyes and a scowl as they fit together seamlessly, fitting into each other’s spaces just exactly right. 

So yeah, he turned to Barton - awkwardly pretty Barton, slyly hilarious Barton, midnight snack sharing Barton - and pressed himself into his space. Angled his head so he could press their mouths together, warm and easy and fitting in ways he hadn’t meant them to, not for a kiss like this. 

He couldn’t help angling a look at Steve after. He couldn’t help that Barton saw. 

“Don’t do that again,” he said, looking angry, looking hurt. Looking at Bucky’s mouth like he couldn’t look away. “Not for that reason.” 


	80. Chapter 80

“…believe they’re making me -” 

The Soldier watches the man’s approach. His gun is in his hand, ready, hungry, but this is - an insult. The man is an excellent marksman. The man is an unenhanced human. The man is unarmed. The man is no threat. 

The rubble is uneven, and the man skids, grazing the palms of his hand on concrete and hissing. The Soldier - dislikes - the noise. 

“Don’t suppose you could throw me a rope?” the man asks. He is close enough now to discern the color of his eyes. The photographs in his file didn’t quite do them justice. 

“But my mission here is to kill you,” the Soldier says. It… was true. His mission was to kill the Avengers. The man is an Avenger. The Soldier is mentally tallying his orders, assessing whether ‘Avengers’ had at any point conflated with ‘superheroes’, whether ‘superheroes’ with ‘superhuman’. If all As are Bs - 

“I’ll admit that puts a dampener on our relationship,” the man says, with a strange sort of grin, and hauls himself onto the plateau the Soldier has chosen. He sits on the edge and kicks his heels. “Whatcha doin’ up here, Buck?” 

“Assessing my orders,” the Soldier replies honestly. And then, more exactly, “looking for loopholes.” 

That brings a genuine smile to the man’s face, although there is something of complexity in his eyes. 

“I guess Steve was right,” he says. He pats the ground next to him. “Come sit.” 

The Soldier… considers. The Soldier was not built for consideration. For options. Nonetheless. 

He sits. 

“We don’t know the right words,” the man tells him. Clinton Francis Barton. Codename: Hawkeye. Automatic designation: Asshole. The Soldier is not certain why. 

“Words?” The Soldier asks. 

“To switch you back. Steve figures -” he sighs. “Steve is an idiot romantic, so.” He turns to face the Soldier more fully, and moves slowly enough that he cannot possibly be assessed a threat. That his hand is pressed to the Soldier’s cheek before he knows it. “Don’t kill me,” he says, soft and low and intent, a tone that - the Soldier cannot possibly think - was made for three very different words. 


	81. Chapter 81

Clint freezes as cool metal fingers close against the skin of his neck. There’s no pressure in the touch, but ‘yet’ looms with a dreadful inevitability, waiting to finish the thought.

“Why?”

The Soldier’s voice isn’t Bucky’s voice, quite, and Clint’s not sure if that’s better or worse. It’s scratchier, unused to speaking, even if they’ve barely lost him days.

“Kind of a wide open question.” Clint can feel it, when his throat moves against ridged metal. He doesn’t like that he knows how much pressure it would take.

“Would you. Kiss me.”

Clint smiles. It’s not one of the better ones.

“What a way to go,” he says with a shrug. The Soldier’s fingers shift against his skin, settle again.

“You are strange,” he says.

“I’m not the only one,” Clint tells him.

“I am what they made me,” the Soldier says, and his fingers are iron bars, and his jaw is steel, and his eyes are molten metal, terrifying and furious. “I don’t want to be what they made me.”

Clint’s not sure how he would have responded to that, and he’s not given the chance. The Soldier’s mouth is just as awkward the second time, and harder, but Clint still gives himself up to it, because what does he have to lose?

“Okay,” he says. “Now I can die happy.”

“Death cannot stop true love,” the Soldier says.


	82. Chapter 82

“Bet you can’t.”

It was the foundations of their entire friendship. The most hotdogs, the number of Doombots taken out, the largest thing stolen from Tony’s workshop without getting caught - Clint won that one. Dum-E was easily coaxed with shiny things - their whole relationship was built on one-upping each other. 

In fact, Bucky was fairly certain the first time he’d kissed Clint it’d been because of the look on his face when Bucky bet him he couldn’t shoot an arrow off his head - the adrenaline rush when Clint  _had_. 

“Fuck,” he breathed, barely, still gasping, still trying like hell to get his lungs to cooperate. His hands were still shaking. Hell, the muscles in his stomach were still clenching faintly, every movement rocking through him a little like waves, leaving him wrecked and beached on the sheets of his bed. 

“Told you,” Clint said, sliding back up the bed, still entirely dressed even though parts of his body were makin’ it pretty damned obvious that they didn’t  _want_ to be. His mouth was swollen, his lips a little red, and his smug grin was more attractive than it should be. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky said again, sincerely, and the smile on Clint’s face widened further than it ought to have been possible. Bucky raised a leaden arm so that he could cup Clint’s cheek, and Clint turned his head to press a kiss into Bucky’s palm. 

“You’re amazing,” Bucky said, and Clint flushed, pressing his face against Bucky’s skin, a little shy. 

Maybe it wasn’t smug. Smug kinda implied that someone thought they’d got something over the other person, when Clint just wanted them both to enjoy the hell out of every second. He wasn’t gloating that he’d taken the knees out from under the legendary Winter Soldier; he’d given his guy the best ride of his life and the curve of his grin said he was proud. 


	83. Chapter 83

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to chapter 67
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/14880800/chapters/35263328

“Honey, I’m hoooome!”

Bucky vaulted over the splintered plank they were kinda using for a kitchen counter, the plastic crates that held it up shifting ominously but just about holding. He stormed towards the echoing voice, anger in every muscle and bone. 

“Where in the goddamn hell have you been?” 

It took him a second, a second of Clint’s less-than-relaxed posture and the bruises around his neck, and he froze when he saw the gun held against the side of Clint’s neck. Whoever held it stayed out of sight, hidden behind the huge sliding door that fronted the warehouse, staying well away from the smaller doorway that Clint’d stepped through. That was wise. 

“I’m gonna kill you,” he growled, and Clint - who didn’t look nearly scared enough, not for the position he was in, grinned a little. 

“Yeah, I know, we agreed I’d tell you before bringing guests over…” 

“Whoever the fuck you are,” Bucky said, maintaining eye contact with fairly serene sky blue, “I’ll… I’ll do whatever you want.” 

Less serene now. Clint’s mouth dropped open, and his hands fell away from where they’d been resting on his head. 

“What?” he said, stupidly. Disbelieving. 

Bucky shrugged, spreading his hands out a little. 

“You c’n come in,” he said. “I ain’t armed.” 

He wasn’t expecting the wide-eyed blond that edged around the edge of the doorway, the look on his face somethin’ like he always wore outside Mrs Deluca’s cake shop. 

“What the hell are you doing, Stevie?” he asked, and he wasn’t expecting the useless punk to drop his gun and wobble on his feet like their goddamned kitchen counter. 


	84. Chapter 84

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNINGS** for past dub-con and slavery.

Clint was aware of the protocol. 

He wasn’t always the best at following it, that was true, but Loki had taught him a hell of a lot better. At least  _that_  could be said for him. 

(Clint was frequently told how  _lucky_  he’d been. Well fed, well dressed, only minor visible wounding - Loki had always been about the aesthetics.)

He dropped to his knees as soon as his new owner came to a stop, hushed whisper of movement even against bare floorboards, head bowed and trained on his clasped hands. His new owner almost tripped over him when he turned around. 

“What the hell have you got me into, you dumb punk?” 

It was barely a murmur; Clint made the decision that it wasn’t aimed at him and stayed silent, every muscle tensed against it being the wrong one. 

The man’s voice was impatient, annoyed, drawling but sure as hell not from Iowa, likely not from anywhere so central. Clint’d heard that there were other states nearer the coast where it was legal to  _own_  a slave, though, even if you’d get arrested for trying to sell them. 

“Okay.” A deep breath, let out slow. “Okay, eye contact, is that a thing you can do?” 

A gentle nudge from the side of the man’s boot and Clint snapped his head up, met cool gray eyes with his own. He wasn’t sure what his face was telling the other man, but he’d been punished enough times for insubordination without disobeying a single command. He knew he couldn’t hide for shit. 

His new owner was a fine looking man, there was that. He lacked Loki’s prettiness; same dark hair but cut ragged and uneven, his jaw stubbled and his chin a little cleft. There was a reluctant smile curling one corner of his mouth, and Clint - who somehow,  _somehow_  hadn’t had the hopeless optimist beaten out of him - quirked his own mouth just the slightest in return. 

The man - Barnes, J., bidding paddle #107, bought him for $10,000 and change - looked a little uncertain. 

“I have a cleaner comes in, and I never really eat here. You gotta find a way to make yourself useful.” 

And Clint - Clint knew his designation. Knew Barnes would’ve known it when he bought him. He was pretty used to working around euphemisms, and he wished disappointment wasn’t a thing he still knew how to feel. He shuffled forward on his knees, kept his hands safely in his lap, and leaned forward to run his lips just barely over the zipper on Barnes’ jeans - before he was pushed away, rough and abrupt and leaving him sprawling on the floor. 

“ _No.”_ His voice was  _horrified_ , and Clint fought back the stupid urge to apologise. “ _Fuck_. I -” he shoved both hands into his hair, his expression appalled and  _furious_ , and Clint shoved himself back up to kneeling and tried not to make the hunch in his shoulders too obvious. 

“Look,” Barnes said, the heat of anger still in his tone but at least an attempt made to speak calmly. “Look, I’m not - I don’t -” he let out a long breath. “I’m a friend of Rogers, okay?” 

It was like a code. Barely that. A joke, a taunt, an insult here in Iowa. Clint raised his head without thinking, blinked up at the other man. 

“You’re an  _abolitionist?”_


	85. Chapter 85

Bucky’s scowling up at the clouds and mentally fuckin’  _daring_  them to make it snow when blissful warmth settles over his shoulders. He clutches it around himself instantly, ducking his nose in, and drags in a breath that’s warmth and pizza and coffee and dog, that feels like perfect comfort and safety. 

He turns around to find Clint zipping himself back into his huge puffy snow jacket, bare arms disappearing under obnoxious purple, and Steve looking stoic and steel-jawed and blue all over. Bucky snuggles smugly deeper into the hooded sweater, grinning at Steve’s aggravated cloud of huff. 

“Sorry Cap,” Clint says, “sniper bros gotta stick together.” 

“Also I was cryogenically frozen,” Bucky says, and Clint gestures emphatically, his jacket hissing as he moves. 

“Also he was cryogenically frozen,” Clint says. 

“I was stuck in the Arctic for seventy years,” Steve says, sounding wounded, and Bucky pointedly pulls up his hood and rubs his cheek against the inside of it, like a cat. 

“I will give you that,” Clint says, and then reaches out to brush his finger lightly against Bucky’s cheek. “But he looks so  _pretty_  in purple,” he says, and grins kinda soft, before blinking and looking awkward, turning on his heel and walking away. 

Bucky gapes after him. He doesn’t - did that just -  _what?_  He can feel the rising heat in his cheeks and buries his nose back into warm fabric, avoiding Steve’s slow-growing grin. 

“Not a  _word_ , Rogers,” he says.


	86. Chapter 86

Clint leaned back against the breastplate, crossing his legs at the ankle, apparently uncaring of the charcoal that smeared his clothes. Bucky folded his arms and watched him suspiciously, flames dancing in his gray eyes. 

“You get good sunset up here,” Clint said. “I mean, I live in a treehouse, I’m doing what I can, but there’s no place down in the village that gets views like this.” 

Bucky grunted, noncommittally. Clint reached behind his back and pulled out a stray vambrace, regarding it thoughtfully before strapping it on. 

“How’s the hunting?” Clint asked. He’d introduced himself like that, just Clint. Not Lord Clint, or Sir Clint, or Prince - just Clint, from the village, looking entirely out of place in his dull clothes. Bucky was used to shiny things, bright, threatening; Clint wore mud brown and faded gray, but he had a rag of beautiful purple tied around his neck like a banner, like a prized possession. He touched it occasionally, brushed his fingers against it absently like he was checking it was still there. Bucky found himself drawn to trace the line of Clint’s unshaven jaw, every single time. 

“Fine,” he said, belated and awkward, pushed into a response by Clint’s steady gaze. He had eyes like the dawn sky. It was the most beautiful time of day, prettier even than this sunset, and Bucky fought the urge to ask him to stay for it. 

“Man of few words,” Clint said. He sat up, pushed himself to his feet in a fluid motion that heated Bucky’s cheeks. “I can handle that.” 

“Not a man,” Bucky said. He uncrossed his arms as Clint came nearer. He refused to know what that meant. 

“Dragon, then,” Clint said, looking amused. He reached out a callused finger and traced the thin skin under Bucky’s eyes, meeting Bucky’s smoldering gaze without flinching away, meeting it with an unfamiliar color of heat. Not envy, or anger, but -

“My gold,” Bucky said, and Clint grinned. “You want it.” 

“I want it,” Clint agreed, and Bucky felt flames rising in his chest. “That’s not all I want,” Clint continued, and he ignored the palpable heat that shimmered the air between them - or maybe didn’t ignore, maybe stepped into it. Basked in it. Set his fingers against Bucky’s burning skin and still leaned in closer, waiting for Bucky’s mouth to ease and part into silent permission, a silent request. 

Bucky was a dragon. 

There had never been a heat like Clint’s kiss. 

“I want your gold,” Clint said, and the hands cradling Bucky’s hips, pulling him close, wouldn’t let him move away. “I was hoping we could share.” 


	87. Chapter 87

Clint let out a long huff of breath and leaned against the back of his chair, head tipping back to stare at the ceiling. He rubbed both hands over his face, most likely listening to their PR rep curse him out over the wire they always made him wear at things like this, and then he sat up with his media-friendly smile back in place. 

“Yes,” he said, with only the barest hint of gritted teeth. “Yes, for the third time this week, my words have turned black, so yes I have met my soulmate.” There was a rush of noise and shouted questions, just like there had been every other time, but Clint continued talking into the microphone flatly, looking like he was working hard to keep the expression out of his voice. “No, I’m not answering questions about who they are, ‘cos they want to keep this private.” 

The slightest emphasis on  _they_ , there. And you could blame it on a long day, on Clint not being able to hear himself right, on the listener’s guilty conscience all you wanted. Bucky knew the truth. He sighed and let out a breath, turning to Steve. 

“I’m an asshole, huh?” 

“No,” Steve said instantly. Gotta love that Captain America sincerity. “No chance, Buck. You’re understandably cautious -” 

“Afraid,” Bucky put in. 

“ - about what the media’re gonna say, given your histories. It’s not being an asshole if you’re wary -” 

“A fuckin’  _coward_.”

“ - and want to wait until you guys’re more firmly established before taking such a big step.” He braced his hands on Bucky’s shoulders and made aggressive eye contact. “It’s a big thing,” he said. “It’s important. It’s okay to -” 

“ - soulmate ashamed of admitting to your relationship publicly?” one of the horde of hovering reporters asked, and Bucky looked over to see Clint instantly disagree, instantly defend, with a miserable flush rising in his cheeks. 

“Oh  _hell_  no,” Bucky said, and shoved his way out of Steve’s hold. 

“Bucky - “ he said, but Bucky ignored him, stalking over, face set in furious lines. 

“Who in the goddamn hell,” he said, making sure to articulate for the microphones, “would be ashamed to be paired with Clint Barton?” 

And before they could do anything, say anything else idiotic and untrue, Bucky pulled Clint to his feet and then swept him right off them, into the kind of stupid, overblown, obvious, claiming kiss that told a person (and everyone else in the vicinity) just exactly how much they were loved. 


	88. Chapter 88

It was kinda crazy, the different reactions of the patrons of this place. Some of them wouldn’t watch, focused intently on whatever they were doing or whoever they were with. Some made a show of that, but Clint could see their sliding sideways glances, the gentle flushes on their cheeks. Some people came specifically for it - which Clint frankly considered an insult to the best coffee in Brooklyn - and made assholes of themselves with cameras and commentary and staring. One website was still dealing with the repercussions from the die-hard ‘Maters about listing the place as a tourist attraction and makin’ it sound like somewhere between a freak show and live porn. 

Clint came to bask in the peace, the  _rightness_  of it. Jesus, who wouldn’t want that?

He’d always kinda wondered what the women thought about it all. Whether they were manipulating the whole thing cynically, making money outta their good fortune, or whether the expressions on their faces told more of the truth of it. 

Hell, on his worst days he wondered whether their movements around each other, perfectly matched and perfectly aware, were some kinda choreographed routine. 

On his other worst days he tried not to watch them hungrily. Tried not to burn with envy at the way they fit so perfectly into each other’s space, orbited so perfectly around each other. 

It was like physics. Like the immensity of the Universe in the barest movement of two hands.

 

Growing up, Clint had known he wasn’t gonna have that. Clint was clumsy and accident-prone, Clint never fit easily into anyone else’s space, Clint couldn’t touch anything without leaving it broken. Just like his dad. 

When they’d joined up with the circus he’d watched the acrobats and  _pined_  for it. He’d trained himself and practised and worked, and eventually he’d been able to make something of himself as an acrobat. He’d been able to watch someone else’s movements and match himself to them just a fraction of a second behind, make it look effortless. 

(It wasn’t effortless, though, and wasn’t that always a reminder of the places he wasn’t enough?) 

Archery had been - a revelation. The ability to achieve smooth perfection of movement  _alone_. To fall into it like breathing, that automatic and that necessary, to get the faintest glimpses of understanding like a kid staring up at the stars. 

When Clint grinned and told reporters that his soulmate was his bow, he wasn’t sure exactly how much he was kidding. 

Hadn’t been. He  _hadn’t been_  sure. 

 

Someone slid into the seat opposite his and god, there it was again, snapping into place. Clint looked up reluctantly and met curious gray eyes, felt the jolt of it. 

See, he’d thought he’d found it with Natasha, a little. Something like it. They’d both learned, they’d both been trained, and having someone that good watching your back, having someone that good working to mirror you, it was so close to perfection you could  _taste_  it. 

He’d thought.

He’d thought, before he’d tasted it. Before he’d known exactly where Bucky would be, when he moved. Before he’d been able to focus on the fierce joy of controlled violence, to lose himself in it in a way he never had before because he’d known - he’d  _known_  - that someone else had a perfect map of his vulnerable places and wouldn’t ever let anyone near them. Had felt, soul-deep, that perfection of movement.

“You don’t want me,” Clint said. 

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky answered, a tiny smile on his face. 

Their hands met like gravity; like the perfect movement of the Infinite. 


	89. Chapter 89

Clint woke up to possibly his least favorite sight in the world, right now - Bucky Barnes’ sulky goddamn face. The guy was slouched in a chair that’d been dragged up to the side of his bed, worn boots crossed on the sheets, and he was glaring at the television in the corner of the room like it’d done him wrong. 

“Aw, fuck,” Clint grated, and Bucky scowled a little deeper and reached automatically for the glass of water on the bedside table. 

“Yeah, this ain’t exactly my first choice either, asshole,” he said, holding the glass steady while Clint took a couple painful sips through the straw. Once he’d placed it back he made a movement like he was gonna show Clint his medical chart - that’d always been the routine; sometimes they’d drawn awesome facial hair on the little dudes, when there was enough space left over from the diagramming of Clint’s injuries - but his hand fell back to his side. Clint couldn’t tell if it was ‘cos that’d been one of their things, and things weren’t supposed to be  _theirs_  any more, or if it was outta consideration for the fact that Clint could barely see out of one swollen-shut eye. 

“They figure you can shoot again in four to six weeks,” Bucky said. That was the first thing he said. Clint kinda hated himself a little for being so pleased that Bucky knew exactly what he wanted to hear; the squirming in his stomach felt almost like something hatching, something starting up new, and he squashed down on it ruthlessly. He shifted, tried to turn onto his side, and musta made some kind of sound ‘cos Bucky was there instantly, pressing his shoulders gently back to the mattress and focusing intently on his left ear. Like he couldn’t even look him in the goddamn eye, any more. 

“You’re gonna hurt yourself,” he said, voice gruff and biting down on a thread of worry that Clint could hear getting stuck between his teeth.

“Can you just -” Clint’s voice was thick and dumb and transparent - “can you not be here? Right now?” Everything hurt. Everything hurt, and his heart hurt maybe worst of all, and if he was gonna cry he didn’t wanna cry in front of Bucky because if Bucky touched him he was gonna fall apart. “I know Natasha made you, but -” 

“Natasha threatened to castrate me if I came,” Bucky said, just a flash of stormcloud gray before he broke eye contact again, looked away. “She said you wouldn’t want me here, but -” 

Clint laughed, painful and more than a little ragged, and something in his chest protested gratingly. 

“Jesus, Buck, you’re the only thing I ever fuckin’ want.” 

“Fuck, sweetheart -” Bucky ground out, and Clint was gonna blame the medication for how he knew he shouldn’t but he pressed up into the kiss anyway, was gonna blame whatever the hell was aching in his chest for how the kiss taste a little like salt. 


	90. Chapter 90

Everyone agreed it had been a good move. There were literally no dissenting voices. Even Clint’d just shrugged, told him it looked good either way, which was all kinds of unhelpful and therefore perfectly Clint. 

When even the goddamn Artificial Intelligence complimented him on his haircut, Bucky gave in and took the hit; he’d looked a little like - well, in Tony’s words, Blue Steel Hobo, whatever that meant. He could allow that he might look a little better with it cut closer to his head. 

He just - kinda wished he’d waited until the summer to make the decision, that was all. 

Steve had dragged Bucky with him to the media scrum, hauling him implacably against Bucky’s protests and telling him in no uncertain terms that he would answer  _at least one_ question, and that  _politely_ , or he was getting left in Jersey. Bucky gave him the shiny metal finger and then attempted not to scowl at the press. It was really goddamn hard, though, when you could tuck your nose as far into the collar of your jacket as you liked, but your dumb exposed  _ears_  were aching. 

He hunched and scowled and then straightened and attempted not to scowl, a constant cycle in the background of Steve’s shot that must make him look some kinda crazy. He was just about to throw in the towel, turn on his heel and start walking back from Jersey, when a musty-smelling warmth was hauled down over his head. 

Clint was all bundled up in something garishly purple, and even with all the corner-caught eye twitches of paparazzi camera flashes he still seemed to only have eyes for Bucky. 

“Looked kinda cold,” he said, and tugged the beanie down over Bucky’s ears, leaning forward to smack a kiss against the dumb purple H on the front. And then he gave the sort of stupid-wide smile that always left Bucky useless and blinking and slow-rising pink. 


	91. Chapter 91

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING** homophobic attitudes

Clint shifted on the bench seat, slightly disconcerted by the way the old people smell mingled gently with the echoes of ancient diner food.

 

He frowned at the woman opposite him, at the way her hands looked like paper bags crumpled thin over time.

 

“I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” he said.

 

“Oh, not a one of us is supposed to be here,” she said easily, gesturing around at the diner, at its impossible mix of cosy familiarity and walls so far away they were impossible to see. In every booth there were a couple people, sometimes three or four. The majority were the kind of old that made you not wanna start a long conversation, but here and there were people Clint’s age and younger. When he concentrated he could hear the distant whisper of conversation, echoing like a church or a funeral or someplace important.

 

“I really - I don’t think I should be here,” he said again, and she smiled a little, labyrinthine wrinkles making the expression something entirely else.

 

“We’re just waiting,” she said, “for someone to join us, or maybe for our cases to be heard. My Bert’ll be along any month now.” She patted his hand. “You got some young lady you’re waiting for?”

 

“No,” Clint said decisively. “Whatever Bucky may be, he sure as hell ain’t a lady.”

 

“Oh,” she said, disapproving, her mouth twisted into a moue of distaste. “You’re one of those queers.”

 

“Oh,” he said, mocking, “maybe that attitude’s why they won’t let you in.” ‘Cos yeah, he got it. Yeah, he knew where he was. Yeah, if he creaked his brain around it, he could remember the all-encompassing explosion that’s delivered him here, too.

 

“Fuck it,” he said. A Barton never gave up, certainly never took the easy way, even when other options didn’t technically exist. And if he fucked it up and turned around, at least the diner wouldn’t be lacking for salt.

 

Time had passed, when he woke. Bucky has passed untidy stubble and was heading for grizzly Adams beard. He was staring at his hands like he’d given up on the rest of the world, like there was nothing in the world worth looking at any more, until Clint slid his own hand between them.


	92. Chapter 92

“Hey, baby,” Clint said, quiet. He didn’t look like he’d moved all day, cast still propped on the coffee table substitute they’d put together out of milk crates and mismatched bricks. The TV was playing something from somewhere in the high hundreds, one of those channels you only ever found in the emptiness of late morning, in the hollow hours of the night. There was cheerful music turned way down low, and a gentle tumble of puppies failing miserably at learning to sit. 

Lucky was sprawled on a cushion that he’d apparently tugged off the couch for the purpose, ear and eyebrow twitching occasionally at a tiny high-pitched yelp. He nosed up against Bucky’s fingers as he trailed past, the kind of easy welcome that was more like recognition, that was more like acknowledgement that it was evening now and it was about time for the family to be complete. 

Bucky eyed the throw pillow that Clint had dumped on the floor in his moment of distraction, considering a complaint, a comment about how guests were treated. The feeling of not-guest from it, though, that could get pretty addictive, so he just hauled off his boots and settled himself at Clint’s feet. 

“I ordered Korean from that place you like,” Clint said, gently unravelling the hair tie that’d saved Bucky’s sanity from the humidity of the day. He spread Bucky’s hair out against his shoulders and gently combed his fingers through it, untangling and settling and soothing, loosening Bucky’s shoulders with every long stroke. “Figured today was an artsy martial arts film kinda day.” 

Bucky closed his eyes and leaned back into Clint’s hands, losing himself in the bliss of having every inch of him known. 


	93. Chapter 93

“Justice,” the barista said solemnly, as he placed Bucky’s order on the counter in front of him, “is served.” 

“What,” Bucky said, not even managing the appropriate rising intonation - people should never joke at him when he hadn’t even had coffee. The barista’s face split into a sunrise grin, appropriate with the sun-gold hair, the summer sky eyes. 

Ugh.

Bucky took a sip of his coffee, ‘cos apparently it wasn’t the caffeine he needed the most this morning, it was the appropriate level of bitterness. 

“You’re the Winter Soldier, right?” Pretty barista’s name was Clint, apparently, lettered carefully onto masking tape covering someone else’s badge. “With the kickass arm and all, murder stare, second best shot in New York…” 

“Second?” Bucky had graduated to questions, apparently, but hadn’t managed to hide the bristling in his tone. 

“You haven’t seen me with a coffee cup and a balled-up napkin,” Clint said, and looked unreasonably delighted when that made Bucky’s mouth quirk into something that could be mistaken for a grin. 

“I’m still confused,” Bucky said. “Justice?”

“That’s what you do, right?” Clint said, somehow entirely uncomplicated, somehow entirely certain. “Good.” 

Bucky knew what the media said about him. 

Bucky stared down at his coffee like it was the sole and only possible reason for the heat that was rising in his cheeks. 


	94. Chapter 94

Partly, Clint took up archery ‘cos it was another reason to cover his mark. Kids used to tease when you covered it, used to call you gay in the disgusted tone they used for kids who worked hard, kids who got good grades, so Clint figured he’d learn to be none of the above, took up archery instead. The hissing sound of arrows whipping through the air did a great job of drowning out everything else he didn’t want to listen to - and then his dad did a great job of drowning out the rest. 

He kept the archery, though. He liked the way it felt to  _know_  he was good. 

Clint’s dad’s mark didn’t match his mom, and Clint’s mom’s mark didn’t match his dad, and he figured that for why they were always so unhappy. He didn’t hold out much hope for his own future.  Cолдат wasn’t even a name. 

*

It changed sometime in the ‘80s. Clint was with the circus then. It took him a few days to notice, ‘cos there were superstitions all over and removing his bracer had never felt exactly safe. He mostly washed what he could make available in public bathrooms, Barney promising he’d guard the door, but sometimes he’d get to go to a school for a couple days. Stay long enough in detention and you could get the showers while the teams were still practicing, and Clint took full advantage when he could. Took his time, washed the stage makeup off from behind his ears, ran his fingers over dark letters that spelled out  _asset_ now. 

Hey, he figures if his soulmate is money, or cars, or even a nice fuckin’ bow, there’s a million ways it could be worse. 

He’s the Amazing Hawkeye. He doesn’t have time for lonely. 

*

Clint kinda assembles a rictus of a grin, and he’s fairly sure he’s the only one that can feel how full of shit it is. He’s so  _happy_  you met your soulmate, he’s so  _pleased_  for you. Mostly, admittedly, he tries to avoid the conversations all together, gets a reputation as a flippant asshole and that’s never been far from the truth. 

Natasha wears her weapons at her wrists. Protecting the vulnerable spots. He gets it. 

“Maybe somewhere it’s a name?” she says, doubtful, running her fingertips over his painfully pale skin, and he snorts and buries his face in her hair. This, for now, is enough. 

(She doesn’t ever show him her wrist.)

*

Being with the Avengers is awkward, and full of mocking, and occasionally violent, so Clint figures it for a family. Figures it for the best he’s gonna get, and for the best he’s gonna get it’s pretty damned good enough. 

He thinks, maybe, that if he works hard enough, if he makes enough shots, that  _he_  can be the asset. 

That they’ll want him to stay. 

And he figures that for a while, until Steve drags a hobo into their base and nudges him hopefully. 

“I -” he looks around at them with wary gray eyes, looks at Steve for approval, clears his throat. “My name is Bucky,” he says, and Clint can  _feel_  his letters change. 


	95. Chapter 95

As far as he is concerned - as far as he can remember - it has always been a part of him, dark letters on pale skin. And the addendum to his missions; not that anything will ever quite feel familiar, but it begins to feel natural like weaponry, like the repetition of water wearing its way into stone. 

_And if you happen to find…_

A mechanic in Wisconsin. A plumber in Maine. A barfly in Texas. 

He wonders if they’ll know when he finds the right one. 

*

He doesn’t investigate. His is not a subtle trade. But there is something about Fury, Nicholas J. Perhaps he has been active too long. 

He finds:

Romanova, Natalia.

Stark, Anthony Edward. 

Barton, Clinton F. 

He watches through a window, curled tight into the darkness allowed by a poorly lit fire escape, and thinks Clinton.  _Clinton._  

Two letters with the weight of the world. 

*

Steve finds him in New York. He hasn’t been able to go far. It makes his skin itch. 

*

Bucky begins to fit a little less like a stolen coat, feels a little more like a second skin. He still calls them by their codenames, because it feels safer - the first time he is introduced to the archer he feels like his heart will beat out of his chest. 

_And if you happen to find…_

Like water in stone, that is why the name has significance. Like water in stone, and letters on skin, and nothing to do with light eyes and a smile that feels like it’s only for him. 


	96. Chapter 96

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Funniest line stolen from That Vine

“Hey,” Barton says, middle of the night, hair bleached blue by TV light, “you’re not there any more, okay? We got you now.” 

*

Bucky is - afraid, with a gun in his hands. On reflection, though, he’s more afraid without it, because Steve has a giant frisbee - that is not what a shield is  _for_ , Steven - and Barton is fighting with goddamn  _arrows_. 

He’s a genius with the arrows, though. He’s not gonna disagree with this. 

(But Steve’s shield is the size of a dinner plate, and he’s an idiot.)

“Thanks,” Barton says, sweaty and grinning and Bucky can’t look at him too long. 

“You need to watch your six, Barton,” he says with a scowl, still looking around, still not able quite to accept that the fight is over. 

“Why bother when I’ve got you?” 

Bucky is afraid. 

*

Natasha’s smile is beautiful, the first time he calls her that, and Steve is always Steve - aside from when he’s Stevie, or Steven, or punk-ass idiot. Wilson eases into Sam, and Tony has never been Stark. 

Barton is Barton is Barton, though, and forever shall be. 

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this to yourself,” Steve says, fingers brushing over the skin of his own wrist with a tiny unconscious smile that stings. 

“A mechanic in WIsconsin,” Bucky says, monotone. “A plumber in Maine. A -” 

“You still waiting to kill me?” 

Saliva floods Bucky’s mouth and he swallows, hard. 

“No,” he says, hoarse. “Stevie, no, you gotta -” 

“No,” Steve says, “you ain’t. So how about you quit being a coward, Buck?” 

*

“We got you now,” Barton says, beautiful in the half-light, shadows stark and letters starker, curling against his pale skin. 

“I don’t trust myself,” Bucky says, and Barton reaches out carefully, curves a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him against his shoulder. 

“You should,” Barton says. “We do.” 

Bucky breathes in, scent of warmth and sleep and all the impossible complications of  _home_ , and breathes out a name against his neck. 


	97. Chapter 97

Bucky figured phone books weren’t really how people did things, these days, but they were what he was comfortable with and what he was gonna stick with. He’d liked the ad, besides - ‘Bird bros’, they were called, and there was a cute doodle of some kinda fat Tweetie-lookin’ bird with a stick gripped tight in its beak. ‘Let us help you build your nest’, it said, and Bucky kinda liked the sound of that - liked the sound of somewhere a little spiky and secure. He liked the idea of somewhere that distinctly separated the inside and outside, with the inside remaining entirely his. 

He honestly didn’t have all that much to move. He felt like kind of an asshole when they pulled up in their pretty purple van to find him with two duffle bags and an armchair he’d fallen so deep in love with that Steve said he could keep it.

“So we’re heading to a Goodwill, I’m guessing?” One of the removal guys said, and he reached out and squeezed Bucky’s shoulder a little, heading off the wince. “Hey man,” he said, wide grin beautifully bright, “it’s your dime. We’re good to help you pick up a couple things.” 

“If you wanna get on Craigslist,” the other guy said, the driver, “we can drive you anywhere in the city, too.” The both of them were in coveralls with neatly sewn name badges, although it looked like Clint had a habit of picking at the stitching on his. It was no real surprise they’d got Sam to get out first to meet Bucky, every inch of him neat and smile a mile wide. Clint looked kinda like he’d got in a fight with a hedge and a couple housecats, covered in band-aids and scratches; enough of a human disaster that yeah, the attraction made sense. 

 Bucky scowled and ducked his head. 

 “I’m an expert at this,” Clint told him at the Goodwill. “I will find you only the best shit.” Bucky automatically looked to San for confirmation, and the resignation in his smile kinda suggested that yeah, Clint was good, but Bucky was still somehow gonna end up kinda regretting it. 

Bucky couldn’t work out what the hell that could involve until he found himself looking helpless, at the pleading look on Clint’s face. 

 “It’s a pizza rug,“ he said, awed. “Aren’t you in love?” 

And god help him, yeah, he maybe was. 


	98. Chapter 98

“He won’t mind,” Natasha said, taking a drink from her beer, her mouth tilted up a little at the corners. “Clint is the worst clothes thief I’ve ever met. You’ll probably find a couple of your own sweaters in there.”

 

Bucky considered this for a second. Clint was due back any minute, sure, but with Clint that could mean anywhere up to three hours, and the busted window that Clint hadn’t got around to doing more than taping cardboard over meant the apartment was Arctic. Natasha was fine - she’d got here first, was wrapped up in a fuzzy purple blanket and had Lucky sprawled across her to to boot. Bucky had been curled around a cup of coffee since he arrived, but it just wasn’t cutting it.

 

“Okay,” he said finally, “but when he asks this was your idea.”

 

Clint’s bedroom was up a flight of rickety metal stairs, and was exactly the bomb site that Bucky had been expecting. There were clothes - mostly unidentifiably stained - on every surface, and the bed was a tangle of bedding and blankets and an adorable plush Cap that Bucky was never gonna let Clint forget.

 

On second look, in amongst all the mess, it was kinda cute how much Avengers merch there was in Clint’s bedroom. He even had a cardboard box that appeared to be full of branded boxers, which Bucky supposed saved on the laundry. He had an arc reactor-shaped nightlight plugged into an outlet by the bathroom; there was a black hooded sweater with a big red hourglass on the back hanging on the bedroom door; one drawer in the dresser wouldn’t close ‘cos of the oversized Hulk hand that was hanging out of it.

 

Naturally there was also a riot of purple, but a lot more of the selection featured Kate than Clint. Bucky had wandered over to take a closer look at a photo of the two of them, all squished up together, pulling faces, looking cute, when he noticed the little figurines.

 

Apparently kids wanted their action figures now. Apparently that was a fad. And the first one Bucky saw was Stevie, posed head up and hands on hips, and he’d be a little worried that Clint had a crush - for Clint’s sake, 'cos Steve was makin’ time with Stark, and not for any other reason - if Clint hadn’t posed a little Spider-Man hiding behind a coffee mug, looking like he was just about to shoot webbing at the back of Steve’s head. Next to that a tiny Hulk was apparently punching through a crushed Coke can - jeez, this was adorable - and Bucky actually snorted out loud when he saw tiny Natasha dangling tiny Tony off the edge of a shelf by his boot.

 

At first he didn’t see himself which, y'know, it figured. He wasn’t exactly hero material, he’d been surprised they’d even made -

 

But turned out he was there, after all. On a little wooden crate that was serving as a night stand, posed so he was sitting with his legs dangling over the edge, his tiny plastic arm wrapped around a tiny plastic Clint, both of them leaning so they were holding each other up. And wasn’t that just exactly right?

 

When Clint eventually arrived, steaming pizza in hand, Bucky was sprawled on the couch wrapped up warm in a purple hoodie, and the grin that settled on Clint’s face when he saw the both of them there, settled into his space -

 

Bucky spread his arm along the back cushion.

 

“C'mon,” he said, when Clint looked a little hesitant, “get over here and warm me up.”


	99. Chapter 99

“Good to have you home, Buck,” Steve said. Clint didn’t say anything but he was smirking down at the brightly coloured breakfast cereal he was drowning in milk.

 

“Good to be back,” Bucky said. He’d made time for a shower, bare feet tucked up under the chair he was sitting on and long hair damp against his shoulders, but he was mostly looking forward to curling up on a decent goddamn mattress, getting some sleep. And he was hoping that he’d have someone else’s weight against his back, co-created pocket of warmth to drive away the bloodstained chill of a mission.

 

That was why he was bowed over a steaming mug of coffee that Clint had poured without asking, chewing on his lip. This wasn’t - hadn’t ever been - an in-front-of-Steve thing, but all he wanted right now was for Clint to put his bowl in the sink and come curl over his back. Or sit on his lap, either, he wasn’t fussy.

 

He’d just - there’d been a couple revelations. Middle-of-the-night lonely, rooftop cold. The kind of revelations that sat waiting on your tongue, looking for any opportunity to escape over your teeth. The kind of revelations that could do a lot to kill a relationship that ain’t any more than fuck buddies, not in words.

 

He sighed, downed the last of his coffee and shoved his chair back to stand.

 

“I’m goin’ to bed,” he said, but his exit was arrested by nothing more than the clink of Clint setting his bowl in the sink.

 

“Wait for me,” Clint said, coming over and taking Bucky’s startled-lax hand, nudging up against him with a grin as warm as the length of him, sharing all along Bucky’s side.


	100. Chapter 100

A sand encrusted SpongeBob splatted onto the jetty next to Bucky, and he couldn’t even muster a smile.

“Not today, Clint,” he said, tired and low, and didn’t bother moving away from the spreading pool of sea water. 

It was one of Clint’s favourite ways to spend time. He brought Bucky all kinds of shit, things he’d found or been brought or - frequently - blatantly stolen, bright plastic and sun-warm metal and salt-stiffened cloth. And he wanted Bucky to explain everything. More accurately, he wanted Bucky to tell him a story about everything, about what it was and what it did and how it came to be. About the kinda people maybe owned it before it dragged itself along the sea bed and into Clint’s hands.

Clint liked it best when Bucky lied, the more interesting and outlandish the better, and if Bucky didn’t know better he might say that Clint was asking delighted questions just to hear him talk.

Bucky got to see Clint smile, hear him laugh. It was a decent exchange.

But today was a bad day. A sirens day, a day of flashing lights that still felt like they pulsed in Bucky’s temples. Today didn’t have enough left for Clint’s stories, didn’t have enough of itself remaining for dinner or chores; hell, Bucky wasn’t even sure he was gonna make it off these wooden planks. 

There was a heavy sort of noise, a determined splashing and a couple grunts of effort, and Bucky woulda appreciated the gun show if there’d been enough of Bucky left. He startled, a little, at the fingers that settled carefully against his hair, threading through then carefully untangling the salt-dirty strands. 

“I figure it’s a guardian,” Clint told him, fingers cool against Bucky’s scalp which was burning a little from the setting sun. “Parents put it in the windows of their children’s rooms to scare away evil spirits with its ugly yellow face, right? And all the legends say that it’ll keep you safe, unless -” 

Clint’s voice was gentle, and his fingers were tender, as he assembled a story and reassembled what little was left of the man on the jetty, weaving him back together with nonsense words and care. 


	101. Chapter 101

Clint had always been a son of a beach, which had just been one in a long line of things his dad had hated him for. Merfolk were supposed to be happy with the dark and the depths, not get ideas above their station; Clint was selfish and stupid and putting their entire community at risk. Clint was a Problem, told about it pretty much from birth, beaten for it when he wasn’t fast enough, or didn’t find somewhere small enough to hide. 

And he was still fascinated by the light sparkling on the water. Still drawn to the warmth of the shallows, and the people, and all the weird shit they left there. 

Clint liked to say he was trawling for treasure; Tasha always asked if he was off collecting crap. He wasn’t gonna repeat what his dad had always said about it, alerted by the freckles that sprang up on Clint’s shoulders as soon as he got anywhere near the sun. But his dad was gone with the currents now, countless tides ago, and there was no one left to judge what Clint chose to do, not after Barney sneered at the colony the landers were building and moved to darker waters. 

Wasn’t all that long before Clint was the only one who stayed, and Tasha was the only one who visited still, bringing him the occasional deep-sea treat and picking curiously through his brightly coloured pile of discarded loot. 

“It’s like a display,” she said, once. “Who are you trying to impress?” 

Clint rolled his eyes and tweaked her tailfins, racing for the shelter of the maze of wood and jumble of boots to hide rather than answer her. 

Landers were an embarrassment in the water. Loud and clumsy and dumb. Clint watched them in appalled fascination, in slow-growing fond fascination, watched them with a level of attention that he was glad that no one was left around to see. 

He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d first noticed -

Man, he wished that wasn’t a lie. 

He remembered exactly the first time he saw him, ‘cos he’d choked on bubbles and nearly killed himself with it. He’d been cutting through the water like he belonged there, fast and sure and graceful and  _beautiful_  in a way that Clint hadn’t actually known landers could be. He’d headed straight for another lander - one of the loudest, who’d slowly gone quiet and still - and had pulled her into his arms and away towards the shore, there and gone in too short an instant. Just long enough to register dark hair, lean form, alien grace. 

He had to see him again. 


	102. Chapter 102

“Aaw, guard, no.” 

The stray glint of metal in the shadows resolves into - of course, it resolves into - Bucky, who is the bane of his life in so very many ways. 

He’s not so bad as Coulson, maybe, who’s always after him to remember his manners, and use the right fork, and keep his (needlessly expensive) clothes pristine and lacking in holes. Not so bad as Fury, who mostly just glares and silently reminds Clint that no one wanted him for a goddamn prince in the first place. Who makes him think maybe it’d be easier if Clint’d been claimed by the same bandits that’d taken his parents, rather than rescued by the circus and transformed into the awkward mess he is today. 

Bucky’s just - he’s  _always there_. No matter where Clint goes to get away, there Bucky is, usually before him, like Clint is paper thin and as easy to read as a brightly colored picture book. And once Clint worked out that Bucky wasn’t gonna necessarily stop him from climbing or tumbling or shooting wherever he wanted, not like all the rest of the guards they’d assigned to him, he’d figured that it’d be mostly okay to have him as a body guard. 

And it mostly had, until Clint found himself doing just about anything to make the guy smile. 

See, there are expectations about that, too. They’ve already got a list. Eligible princesses, Ladies, daughters of dukes, political alliances and fortunes and pretty golden cages that Clint sure as hell doesn’t want to climb into and sing. He’s mostly been avoiding the whole issue, rooftops and high wires, and every hidden place has a hidden Bucky waiting there. And it feels like - it’s gotta stop feeling like - Bucky’s waiting for  _him_. 

It’s too easy to believe a reluctant, hard-won smile is a gift. It’s too easy to believe the barest spark of warmth in gray eyes is an invitation. It’s too easy to believe he’d be welcome if he crowded Bucky back against the bare stone and slanted their mouths together, chased that warmth and pressed himself close. 

It’s some kind of hell that he can’t hide from the one person who can see right through him, wide open and simply illustrated and impossibly easy to read. 


	103. Chapter 103

Steve and Tasha had gone to investigate the boat ride that had lit up as soon as they’d gotten near it, the music out of tune and the boats dragging half-drowned through the water. Steve had looked a little pale, his jaw clenched tight, and Clint wished he’d listened a little closer when the villain of the week’d been crowing about his mind-whammy whatever. He remembered something about facing fears, maybe, but most of Clint’s fears had had a nice and faintly impersonal funeral service when he was still too young to vote, and the few remaining were safely imprisoned on Asgard. As far as he was concerned, he was golden, so when the haunted house lit up all green and leering he shrugged his bow a little more securely on his back and prepared to walk inside. 

“We taking this one?” he asked, and Bucky blinked and unstuck his feet, shouldering past him to take the red-painted steps into the skeleton’s grinning mouth. 

Clint rolled his eyes and followed, pretty accustomed by now to the way that Bucky always wanted to be in front. He figured you had to be pretty forceful to hold your own against Captain America; Clint was friends with Natasha, so he was used to being led. Not to mention any jump scares in this decrepit fairground ride would all hit Bucky first, and the admittedly slim chance of the Winter Soldier screaming like a little kid made anything worthwhile. 

He wasn’t sure when it’d been decided that they’d pair up like this. He figured that maybe Cap’d misinterpreted competition and trash talking for training together, on the range, but they’d turned out to work pretty well side by side. Clint had thought Bucky was kind of a dick, at first, and then they’d gotten to know each other a little better and he’d had it confirmed in all the best sorts of ways. Nobody could make him laugh like Bucky, that was for sure, but the growing warmth in his stomach when he was around him was probably best ignored. 

The lights inside were flickering and uncertain, and Clint made sure to watch where he put his feet. He followed the shadow of Bucky’s leather-clad back, ignoring the trailing of fake cobwebs against the back of his neck and startling out a laugh when a skeletal hand dropped out of the wall to land on his shoulder. 

“Oh man, this is like being a kid,” he said, his voice weirdly out of place against the background drone of creaks and groans. Bucky turned to glance at him, the green lighting making him look weirdly pale, oddly sick. “You ever -” he said, and then hop-skipped to keep up as Bucky shoved forward again, “you ever come somewhere like this when you were young?” 

“Yeah,” Bucky said heavily, his shoulders winching up tight. “Exactly like this.” 

“You’re scared of a haunted house?” Clint blurted, startled, and Bucky turned to shoot him a murderous glare that made him raise his hands a step back. “Woah, no, I’m not judging, I just -” 

“Let’s get this done,” Bucky said, and shoved through a creaking wooden door. Clint followed on his heels, reaching out a hand to catch hold of the hem of his leather jacket in the dark of the hallway, resting the weight of his hand against Bucky’s hip. 

“I’m not judging,” Clint said again, earnest in the darkness. “You’re the bravest guy I’ve ever met.” 

Bucky let out a sigh, pushing aside a flaming skull that descended on them. 

“You don’t have to bullshit me,” he said. “And it - it wasn’t the house, so much.” 

Clint let go of Bucky’s jacket, let his hand rest against Bucky’s hip. Bucky stopped in the shadows, no possibility of seeing the expression on his face. 

“I went to the fair with Stevie,” he said, the dark making his voice a little harder to read. “And the house, it was nothing, just something for little kids, but he wanted to go in - wanted some ideas for a picture he was drawin’ or something, I didn’t listen. And he was a little guy, kinda sickly, and -” he swallowed hard, audibly. “I thought he was gonna die,” he said, and the fear was painted thick enough to see even in the dark. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Clint said. “It’s deserted, there’s nothing to goddamn fight, let’s -” 

It was Bucky’s turn to grab hold of him, this time, and he didn’t go for anything so easily denied as a hip. He clasped hold of Clint’s hand and threaded their fingers together, following him back towards the place they’d come in. To the blank wooden wall where the door used to be. 

“Hey!” he yelled, actually kind of offended. “What’s the big idea? We came in your stupid haunted house, we faced Bucky’s fear, what more do you -” 

“Oh,” said a silken voice, coming through every speaker at once, “not  _all_  of them.” 

There was a coil of white around their legs, the sneaking cold of dry ice leaking from a battered black cauldron. Clint rolled his eyes and turned to share his disdain, only Bucky was staring at the encroaching white like it was the end of the world. 

“What -?” Clint said, and then coughed, a dry sort of tickle in his throat. “What’s up?” He coughed again and then breathed in deep to try and clear it, only it felt a little like a safety bar had closed against his chest, too close and impossible to move. “Fuck.” He didn’t even quite make it to the end of the word, coughing out another lungful and barely able to draw it back in, his breath audibly rattling in his lungs.

“No,” Bucky said, “ _fuck_ ,” and he grabbed Clint by the shoulder, pushing and pulling and shoving him back into the nightmare-dark hallway they’d only just left. The dark felt like syrup that Clint was trying to pull in through his mouth, every breath like wading through molasses, and it was all he could do to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, stumbling helplessly where Bucky led. 

He lost track, there. The dark continued out past the hallway, sparkling at the edges of his vision. Maybe he fell, once. Maybe he imagined the frantic note in Bucky’s voice. He thought he remembered stumbling over poorly-painted Styrofoam graves,  thought maybe Bucky’s hand tightened on his to the point of pain. But nothing was clear until he was blinking up at starlight, watching his breath form clouds while Steve dripped swamp water nearby. 

“Fuck,” he croaked, filling his lungs with ice-cold algae-scented air and coughing it out again, “I vote we never do that shit again.” 

“Did someone kill him?” Bucky asked, voice cold like death and furious like hell, and he looked ready to head right back into the house when Tasha silently shook her head no. Clint made a soft protesting noise, involuntary, and Bucky swore softly and came to prop him upright, wrapping a warm arm tight around his waist. 

Clint leaned against him heavier than he needed to. Bucky pressed his mouth to Clint’s cheekbone and breathed out gentle against his temple, shaky like he’d been scared out of his mind, warm like the most bone-deep relief. 


	104. Chapter 104

It was entirely possible that the first time Clint felt fuzzy love-type feelings for Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, was when they were curled up together on the love seat on a Mandatory Movie Night, capital letters all Steve’s; he’d started talking a lot about hippy dippy crap - togetherness, and processing, and mutual support and shit - since he’d started hanging out with Sam. Clint figured the run of horror movies was the team’s passive-aggressive means of protest. 

Clint had originally ended up sharing a seat with Bucky ‘cos no one else was willing to come near his Funyuns. Later it’d been because he was quietly hilarious, in his own special way, but the real kicker’d been when Bucky had stared blank-faced at the screen, at the knife the villain’d been monologuing over. Clint had a moment of wariness - maybe the brainwashed assassin wasn’t the best audience for the latest splatter-fest - but Bucky had just arched an eyebrow, looking unimpressed. 

“I’ve had bigger,” he said, and Clint snorted onion-flavored corn snack out of his nose. 

He was doing it just loud enough for Clint to hear, the bastard, so it was Clint who kept getting disapproving glares from Steve. When Bucky made disparaging comments about the murderer’s grip on his weapon, when he criticised his bondage technique - and wasn’t  _that_ something Clint was gonna think about later? The worst part, though, the most unbearable, was when Bucky was mockingly echoing the hero’s grunts of pain, warm breath against Clint’s ear. 

He couldn’t help it, the goosebumps, the way the hair was raising on his neck, the little shudder back against Bucky that couldn’t be much mistaken for anything other than it was. 

“Huh,” Bucky said, low but perfectly clear against a background of screams and squelches, pitched just right for Clint’s Stark-designed aids to pick him up. “That a machete in your pocket, or -?” 

It was the worst pick-up line this side of speed dating. Clint was doin’ a public service, cutting him off.


	105. Chapter 105

Clint was wearing one of those cable-knit sweaters, like a fisherman on the front of some over dramatic romance novel. Who knew where the hell he got it from - Bucky had been convinced that he had nothing but hooded sweaters and sweatpants in various shades of faded gray. It was heavy though, and soft, and it fell over his knuckles when he grabbed Bucky’s hand. 

He didn’t think the farm was intentionally an obstacle course; the hay bales and jack-o-lanterns were meant to picturesque, maybe, but Bucky kept stumbling over everything and feeling like he was gonna fall. Didn’t help that Clint was leading him out of the pools of pumpkin-light, round back of the house where the only thing lighting the way was the moon’s Cheshire cat grin. 

Clint found his way unerringly to creaking steps in the darkness, a railing that splintered against Bucky’s hand. There was a seat that swung under them as they settled, the fabric of the cushion cool and smooth in the darkness, and Bucky thought that if he could remember much of his teenage years, this’d be close to what they’d be like. No one could see his goofy smile in the darkness, no chance of giving himself away to anyone but Clint, who slid right in close as Bucky slung an arm around his shoulders, running his fingers over a sweater that was even softer than it looked. 

“You look beautiful tonight,” Bucky told him, ‘cos words in darkness are easier said. 

“Wait until we’re in the shadows to say it,” Clint groused, but he crossed his arm over his chest so he could take Bucky’s hand. 

“You look like a romance novelist’s daydream,” he said, and Clint snorted out a laugh that scared something up from the trees. 

“Yeah, well you just about killed me cuddling a baby goat.” Clint pressed a kiss to his knuckles, brush of chapped lips against Bucky’s cold skin, and Bucky brushed his fingers against stubble and wondered how to form the words he was stumbling over, how to tell Clint he was maybe starting to fall. 


	106. Chapter 106

“You’re cold,” the yeti said, dark hair falling across his face as he tilted his head down, looking at Clint’s frost-reddened hands. 

“I’m cold,” Clint agreed, hunching a little further into his scarf. “I’m human, on my father’s side.” 

“I’m sorry,” the yeti told him gravely, and Clint’d take offence, maybe, if he had a better example of humanity to hold up. He shrugged instead, the movement tugged all lopsided with how he’d shoved his fingers into his armpits to warm. 

“I’d wondered,” the yeti said, tilting his head to one side. His eyes were the gray of layers of ice over dark water, only not nearly so cold. 

“Wondered?” 

“About your horns.” 

The yeti’s horns were beautiful, of course. Thick and ridged and curled around behind his pointed ears, his dark hair falling around them like he didn’t even have to try to look so damned good.  _Clint’s_  horns were barely worth the name. They just about poked higher than his untidy blond hair, stubby and useless and more sensitive than he’d like. He was, about them, too.

“Yeah, well,” he said, “you got a problem with my horns, bro -” 

“I like them,” the yeti said. Clint let out a long cloud of an exhalation, lost, a little, for words. 

“You -”

“Like them.” The yeti was flushing a little purple now, just at the pointed tips of his ears, which was the kind of fascinating you just didn’t look away from. “They’re different. Interesting.” 

“Most yetis kinda hate me for them.” Clint’s voice was matter-of-fact, because eventually the emotion of it all sank in deep enough that it couldn’t be heard. “Most yetis think I’m some kinda abomination.” 

“Well I’m not most yetis.” He hesitated, then. Looked away up the mountain, like there was anything to see through the cloud. “Most yetis think I’m - abominable,” the yeti said. His voice was like ice cracking over endless depths. 

“I’m not most yetis,” Clint said, and grinned, and held out his half-frozen, half-human hand. 


	107. Chapter 107

Steve is doing his level best but he hasn’t quite managed to bite down entirely on his smile. Bucky scowls at him and fights the urge to adjust himself again; spandex is possibly the single worst fashion invention of the 20th century, and he has a wedgie that feels like it’s sawing him in half. That ain’t even the worst of it, though - he had to get Natasha to help him wrangle a goddamn  _hair net_  before he could get the damn hood and mask combo over his head, and he has a horrible suspicion that there are  _pictures_. 

“I’m guessing you lost a bet?” Steve asks sympathetically. He’s come as Westley, from that princess film Tony made them all watch last week. Bucky’s kinda hoping that Tony’s gonna be sporting a red dress. 

“We made a deal,” he says, and lets the side of his mouth curl up into the sort of grin that’s all kinda easy to read. “Clint was pretty goddamn persuasive.”

“Well that’s more than anyone here wanted to know, let’s leave it there, shall we?” Tony has kept the mustache but he’s also donned a wavy dark wig and he’s wielding a sword. “I don’t suppose,” he asks Bucky, “you happen to have six fingers on your right hand?” 

Bucky shows him he’s got one, at least, and Tony grins. He says something else, but Bucky’s stopped listening entirely, ‘cos Clint’s just walked in and - holy  _shit_. 

He… wasn’t sure exactly what he’d been expecting. Leather, probably, some kinda of tin foil abomination around his arm. He’d expected a bad wig, something half-assed and thrown together. 

Clint’s wearing dress uniform. Khaki and perfectly pressed, his hat at a jaunty angle atop his Brylcreemed hair. Someone’s helped him tie his tie, but he’s already tugged it a little sideways, and Bucky catches the slightest glint of silver that just might be the dog tags they keep in a dish on the dresser. That hint of recognition flares through him like electricity, straightening his spine and widening his pupils and making him regret every fuckin’ inch of spandex that’s giving him away. 


	108. Chapter 108

They’d left him - thank  _fuck_  - his aids, but they hadn’t left him a finger to wiggle free, hadn’t left him any way to switch them over to comms so he could have some chance to get out of this place. 

No, instead they’d strung him up like pork products, his handcuffed wrists either side of a huge iron hook, his toes just about able to brace him on the floor. Everything hurt.  _Everything_  hurt. His jaw and his toes and his fingernails and his  _hair_  hurt, and Clint was getting a little unnerved at how few options there were, escape-wise. Few as in approaching none. Approaching as in -

The rattle of the huge metal door brought his head up, like that was gonna do him any good with the rough cloth that was strapped tight over his eyes. There was no other sound. No footsteps, no movement, no  _breathing_ even, save for Clint’s freaked out, panting breaths. So he jerked backwards at the cold touch on his forehead, not that it did him much good - just span him around, useless, all his weight hanging from his wrists where the cuffs were cutting in. 

The fingers came back, insistent, hooking under the rough material of his blindfold and easing it up his forehead. He couldn’t help but squint in the harsh white overhead lights that made the world outside the windows look even blacker in comparison. He hadn’t known he’d been here long enough for it to be night. 

The guy was pale. He was hot, too, but it was the pale that really got you, ghost-white that contrasted with the dark stubble on his chin, with the dark stormy gray of his eyes. He was looking at Clint thoughtfully, eyeing him up and down, and Clint grinned slow and easy and hauled himself up to wrap his thighs around the guy’s pale neck. 

That was the plan. The guy held him still without even straining, and there was something off-kilter about his smile. 

“Well ain’t you just the prettiest gift,” the guy drawled, and there was something in his voice that spoke to the oldest prehistoric part of Clint’s brain, the part that still waited for the wolves to come in the night. 

“I’m not yours,” Clint said, ground out more like, all of his weight hangin’ off his wrists and the cuffs biting deep. He could feel the hot slide of blood, now, and if there was any kinda nerve damage to his wrists, Clint was gonna - okay, find it a little more difficult to kill whoever the hell put him here, but that just meant he’d do it  _slow._

 _“_ Mmm,” the guy said, and he stepped in, let down Clint’s weight carefully so he could push up again on his aching goddamn feet. He leaned in bad-touch close, and Clint’s heart was rabbit-fast and nowhere near enough of it was fear. 

Maybe it wasn’t just the pale, that got you. 

“Maybe not yet,” the guy said, and he moved his head like a snake, whip-fast, licking up Clint’s tricep where a dark line of blood was making its sluggish way down. His teeth, in that wide white grin, were wrong in ways that Clint couldn’t make himself believe. 

“Maybe not ever,” he said, still. He said scared, and stupid, and stubborn. 

“We’ll see.” The guy crouched a little and then leapt, insane standing jump high in the air, and then there was a twist and a painful yank and he’d done what Clint’s whole weight couldn’t do - the hook was… 

No, it wasn’t pulled out of the ceiling, it was twisted, bent all outta shape, and he didn’t know the kinda strength that it’d take to do that, but there was ice running down his spine and he wasn’t sure he’d ever been so close to death as he was right now.

Death smiled, charming and handsome and impossibly pale. 

“Start running,” he said.  


	109. Chapter 109

“He spilled coffee on his shirt.” 

The gentle clicking of Bucky’s metal fingers stopped and then started again, faster and more agitated. Steve glared at Tony. 

“"You are not helping,” he hissed, which was a pretty impressive feat for a sentence without sibilance. Tony shrugged and smiled winningly, ‘cos he was up for anything right now that didn’t end in a murderous rampage. 

“Animal rescue,” Natasha said after a minute’s thoughtful silence. Steve let out a long breath through his nose and opened his mouth to protest, again, but Tony cut him off before he could get there. 

“Ten bucks,” he said, and Natasha held out a perfectly manicured hand to shake on it. “You want in on this action, Cap?” 

“I’ll take mugging,” Bruce said, and Tony shook his hand gleefully and then reconsidered. 

“Wait,” he said, “preventing or victim of?” 

Bruce shrugged. “Either.” 

Tony gaped, outraged. “"That’s two, you can’t have -” 

“"Tony,” Steve snapped. 

“"But he’s cheating!” Tony whined, and probably deserved the beautifully nail varnished thump. 

“"I’ll take -” Wanda started, but Bucky cut her off, his voice flat. 

“"It’s fine,” he said, and tugged his tie all lopsided. “"He got cold feet last minute, and I’m gonna kick his ass for it, but -” 

“He’s in a hostage situation,” Sam said. 

“"Ooh, nice thought,” Tony said, and then deflated a little at Steve’s glare. “"But come on, Sam, we’re done, read the room -” 

“"No,” Sam said, and turned his phone to show them the screen. “"He’s in a hostage situation.” And yeah, that was Clint’s clearly bruised face, hands over his head and standing at the glass door of a bank, rueful smile on his face. 

“Son of a bitch,” Bucky said, and Steve had to apologise to the officiant on their way out the door.


	110. Chapter 110

Steve stepped into the briefing room and then immediately stopped like he’d hit a wall. Clint scowled down at the table.

 

“Wow,” Steve said, “you smell - “

 

“Yeah,” Clint told him, “I’ve been told.”

 

“- really familiar,” Steve continued over him, and Clint lifted his head and blinked at him.

 

“Okay. That’s new.”

 

“No it’s not.” Tony continued tapping idly at his tablet. “You smell like meatloaf Thursdays in the SHIELD canteen, we’ve told you this. It’s okay, Cap, we’ve opened a window, it should dissipate in - huh.”

 

Clint ducked away from where Steve was apparently attempting to inhale his hair.

 

“No,” Steve said, and he sounded kinda long ago and far away, the way he got sometimes. “He smells like -“

 

“Like a soulmate, apparently.” Bruce had got kinda excited, given a new chemical formula to examine; he didn’t often speak up without being directly asked for his opinion, certainly didn’t weigh in often from the front of the room. “At least, that’s what the man we captured appeared to be babbling about. There’s certainly a pheromone component to whatever the hell Clint got sprayed with, but what exactly it does - “

 

“It makes him smell like he should be served up by a woman called Doris,” Tony said helpfully, “but other than that -“

 

“What the hell,” Bucky said from the doorway, and Clint sunk even deeper into his chair. All the smiles and sideways glances and blatant showing off of trick shots wasn’t gonna mean a hell of a lot when weighed against the boner-killing powers of smelling like some grandmother’s kitchen. He was gonna be starting from square one, after this, if Bucky even let him get that far.

 

“Shit,” Steve said, softly. “He smells like -“

 

“He smells like *home*,” Bucky said, and Clint looked up to find that the sideways smile was still right there.


	111. Chapter 111

So Clint grew up in a world where you hear your soulmate’s voice in your head, but only when they’re singing. 

So Clint (thanks, dad) grew up in a world where most things sound a little like the adults in Peanuts. Even with his new Stark-designed in-ear state-of-the-art robot ears, it’s kind of a crapshoot picking anything out of the surrounding pervasive bullshit.

One time they nearly lost Cap ‘cos of a persistent goddamn pigeon, Clint’s sticking with the text interface on his Stark watch, okay. 

So yeah, in his head it’s low and gravelly, and maybe sounds a little Brooklyn. So yeah, maybe Bucky’s his soulmate. 

Honestly? He loves the guy beyond anything he thought possible. So, yeah. He doesn’t give a shit. 


	112. Chapter 112

Kate scooped the braid forward over her shoulder again, ‘cos sure it was sensible as hell for shooting - Katniss was playing to  _win_  - but it kept getting tangled up in her bow and quiver where they were slung across her back and she was about ready to shoot something.

“Come  _on_ ,” she muttered, pounding on the door again, and then gave up on anything like subtlety. “COME  _ON_ , HAWKGUY, WHAT THE  _HELL?”_

Tomás solemnly held up his tiny hand and she sighed and dropped another quarter into it. Raf had held out for a percentage of her candy, because Raf was a natural Slytherin and secretly her favourite. She was kinda curious about his aim. 

“What?” 

The door jerked open, then immediately almost shut, just the side of a face, a bruise-stung neck, a shirt that was both inside-out and back to front, if she was any judge. 

“Trick or treating?” she said. “Ring any bells? You promised -” 

“Aaw,  _futz_ ,” Clint said, and then reached for the dish he kept by the door for the purpose and dropped a quarter into Tomás’ implacable hand. 

“ - after that thing with Simone’s bathroom sink - “

“Yeah, no, I remember, I gotta just -”

“ - ‘swear’, you said, ‘on my favorite bow -’“ 

“Yeah, no, I just -” Clint was flushing slowly, patchy and unflattering, “just gimme five minutes to get my costume back -” a surge of color - “get my costume  _on_  -” 

He turned to go, swinging the door shut behind him, but Kate just about caught a glimpse of a purpling bruise at the nape of his neck, saw Bucky leaning against the kitchen counter and grinning with sharp plastic teeth. 


	113. Chapter 113

The circle of firelight barely touched the surrounding trees, making it feel a little like the world ended just beyond where they could see. The low snap and roar of the campfire still almost drowned out Clint’s voice, and all the Chipmunks leaned forward, their tiny eyes wide. 

“And in the darkness of the warehouse,” he said, “there was a chamber as cold as ice, colder, as cold as -”

“As cold as the bottom of the ocean where the light doesn’t reach!” A tiny piping voice said. 

“As cold as the dark side of the moon actually, Philip,” Clint said. “You wanna tell this story?” 

“No dad,” the kid said, grinning and biting his lip. “Sorry dad.” 

“And when the adventurer approached, treading as light as he possibly could, holding his breath, he could just make it out through the glass. A body that had been dead for a hundred years, but still preserved. Still looking like at any second, at any movement, at any breath it could open its cold, dead eyes.” 

The campers gasped in unison, and huddled a little closer together. 

And then, out of the darkness, a voice, loud and terrible and wild. 

“Stop telling people I’m goddamn dead!”

“Sometimes,” Clint said, over the screams, “I can still hear his voice…” 

 

 


	114. Chapter 114

They come back gradually. He’ll be eating a sandwich and grin suddenly around a mouthful when he remembers the faces Becca used to pull at the choices he made. The scent of burning rubber has him racing for the bathroom, emptying his stomach on his knees with blank gray eyes staring up at him from the depths of his mind. 

It’s not an easy process. It’s - Jesus, is it ever not an easy fuckin’ process. But somehow he still welcomes it, ‘cos it feels like - like ballast. Like every little pebble of memory is weighing him down into who he’s trying to be. 

One morning he hears Stevie laugh - that’s something that’s never gonna change, no matter how goddamn big he gets - and remembers him making fun outta Bucky’s soulmark. 

_‘Really?’ Skinny fingers poking at the skin of his left arm, every word breaking up a little around the laugh he ain’t trying to hide. ‘The one person who’s most perfect for you, and they’re gonna -’_

What they’re gonna, he has no clue. The question is whether he’s gonna ask. ‘cos he’s been around a long time, off and on, and what if - what if they died in 1948? What if he doesn’t remember them saying it, and he spends his life searching? 

What if he killed them?

So he doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t, and then one day he’s been at the range with Clint and he’s chatted over curry with Bruce and he’s sparred with Natasha and he’s let Tony poke at his arm and he’s - he’s whole, in a way he hadn’t ever expected to be. 

So fuck it. 

He asks. 

And - and yeah. That makes sense. 

*

Clint ain’t a supersoldier. He needs more sleep than they do, and he snatches it in weird times and places, wherever it’ll fit. He answers the door with bed hair and low-riding sweatpants, and there’s no way in hell Bucky’s not gonna take a moment to appreciate it. 

Clint’s also got a sock attached by static to his ass, so he’s napped in his pile of clean laundry again, and how in hell could it be anyone else?

“Were you ever gonna tell me?” he asks, and Clint just grins the most beautiful, half-asleep grin. 

“I mean, my words are kinda generic,” he says, “I could be sure.”

“But you knew,” Bucky says. Clint looks at him, all open and soft and entirely without defence. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I knew. How could it be -” 

Bucky doesn’t wait for him to finish. He knows what he’s thinking. He knows everything, right down to the bones of him. Right down to the soul. He tugs him forward instead, places his hand squarely on that goddamn sock and leans in to taste him for the very first time. 


	115. Chapter 115

After all the fuss has died down, after the Avengers en masse have left, Bucky trails through the orphanage, lends a hand here and there to put things back to rights. The director’s sitting on one of the cardboard boxes in the lobby, the ones Tony’d had delivered, with the clothes and the computers and the craft supplies, and she’s fanning herself a little, wearing a smile that just won’t quit. 

Bucky gets roped in to helping prepare dinner, industrial vats of bubbling brown goop that smells kinda heavenly, if he’s honest, after months of greasy pizza interspersed with fancy canapés. He hauls huge bags of pasta around, tucks chairs of various sizes around hastily assembled tables, crashes silverware into plastic trays. 

As they’re pinning one of the strings of pumpkin lights back up, a kid who’s missing two front teeth tells him a story about Captain America that Bucky’s pretty sure ain’t true - he woulda mentioned  _dinosaurs_ , right? - but when she’s done he swears blind he saw it happen, and helps her fix her hair.

Eventually he runs Clint down in a side room on the first floor. He’s cross legged on the floor, handing over cards to the kid who’s building, giving helpful advice about structural reinforcements that is soundly ignored. He looks up when Bucky walks in, flicks him the edges of a grin, but there’s a troubled patch of water between his brows that Bucky wants instantly to smooth away. 

He’d disappeared before they were too far into the tour, muttered into Bucky’s ear that he wanted to look under the surface, too. He gets it - they’ve talked, mostly in the dark and under covers, and there were  _reasons_  Clint ran away to join the goddamn circus. 

“All good?” he asks, and Clint gives him a nod, absent but certain. 

“Bucky’s not so big on crowds, either,” Clint says after a moment, handing over an ace, and the kid shrugs but flicks his eyes over Bucky - his ear, his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose - and then goes back to his building. And the timing ain’t right, now, Bucky gets that, but as he sits down to the side of Clint, their sides all pressed together, he thinks somethin’ like this ain’t too far off. 

 

 


	116. Chapter 116

Bucky wakes up to gentle fingers against his forehead, smoothing back the wispy little bits of hair that never stay where they’re put. He enjoys it for all of a New York second before reality kicks back into play and he groans in the back of his throat. 

“Oh yeah,” Clint says, “you’re gonna get yours,” and his voice is just as gentle as his fingers are but his voice is wearing that smile that says you’re not gonna know what hit you. Bucky loves that smile. Bucky would live and die for that smile, and that includes the goddamn times that that smile is pointed at him. 

“‘msorry,” Bucky manages, between split lips. Clint’s fingers trace across his eyebrow, his temple, his cheek, impossible-light across the bruises there. 

“Better be,” Clint says. 

“I didn’t die?” Bucky offers it, and the careless twitch, the clumsy jostle of a barely-unbroken jaw, that says all the words that Clint is biting down on. 

“If you’d’ve died,” Clint says, pressing his lips to Bucky’s forehead, getting hair in his mouth, “better believe I would’ve killed you.” 


	117. Chapter 117

Most days he fights bad guys. Most days he actually, no lie, no exaggeration, he  _fights evil_ , so you’d think his brain would give him a break on the days that he can’t. 

The stupid thing about it is that he actually prefers when he’s got his limbs hanging off, or whatever. When he’s been bullied by Steve’s words, or Nat’s silences, or Bucky’s glares, or - a couple of times - actual genuine  _restraints_  into staying put. When he’s got no choice but to sit and glower about being made to take it easy, when he can poke his bruises or jar his broken bones to remind himself that today, okay, he  _can’t_. 

That today it’s not ‘cos he’s failing. 

The therapist they made him see for a while gave him words for it. Gave him research homework to do, and he gets that it’s not a  _fault_ , it’s not a  _weakness_. It just doesn’t feel like something he can allow himself. It doesn’t feel like something he can use as an excuse. 

It took him a while to get what it was. His therapist started saying  _depression_  and Clint blinked and told her that he wasn’t  _sad_. He kinda hadn’t related it to  _heavy_ , to  _tired_ , to  _slow_  - hadn’t realised that it wasn’t usual to feel like this. He’d kinda assumed that everyone felt like this and got on anyway, felt like this and still managed to cope with shit, so what kind of a lazy failure was he? Some days it was a relief to know that there was a reason he couldn’t get outta bed. Some days he hates on every fuckin’ blanket and silently wishes he’d smother in ‘em. 

There’s a gentle tapping of metal fingers against the door frame. Clint’s got his aids in ‘cos the silence in his head is worse than the clammy feeling they get when his head’s wrapped up in blankets; his brain loves to fill that silence with self-recrimination and hate. Clint doesn’t move, silently kinda hoping he’ll disappear. 

“Yeah, Stevie, we ain’t coming,” Bucky says, and Clint makes a small protesting noise ‘cos there were  _plans_  and Bucky shouldn’t have to deal with his shit. Bucky evidently disagrees, ‘cos he hangs up the call after a couple more exchanges, and then awkwardly nudges at Clint until he can curl up behind him, swing his arm across the bundle of blankets and boyfriend and squeeze it in close. 

“‘m sorry,” Clint says, feeling stupid and burdensome and useless. 

And Bucky knows he’s not gonna get anywhere refusing to accept the apology - they’ve had this argument before - so he just tugs at blankets ‘til he can press a kiss to Clint’s messy dumb head, tell him he loves him instead. 

 

 


	118. Chapter 118

Obviously, the amount of money the first one made, they were in talks for a sequel five seconds after the opening weekend. And, y’know, good for Stevie, but Bucky had kinda liked when his position as Steve’s ‘bodyguard’ was just an excuse to not get a real job. Now Uncle Sam is on the backs of cereal boxes and the sides of buses, and there are screaming fans barely being kept off the set, and Bucky’s left eye has developed a semi-permanent twitch. 

When he sees the star-spangled back there’s not even a moment of confusion, ‘cos he’s literally just left Steve in his trailer, exhausted after signing just about a million kid-size shields. He wouldn’t have mistaken them anyway, ‘cos as close as it looks on screen Bucky’s known Stevie since he was just about the size of a tictac and tryin’ to fight the world. They chose well, though - the guy’s got a beautiful physique, and his ass deserves top billing all its own. He does the suit proud, but he’s never managed the whole steel jaw thing that Steve does so well; soon as he turns around and sees Bucky’s face he’s smiling, grinning fit to bust.

Bucky’d swear it used to be easier to stop himself smiling back. 

“Look ma,” Clint says, “no casts!” 

“Still can’t believe you managed to break both your goddamn wrists,” Bucky says, ‘cos Clint is a stunt man, Clint grew up in the goddamn  _circus_ , and he somehow managed to put himself out of commission while trying to move house. He folds his arms across his chest and cocks his head to one side. “And - is that a black eye?” 

“So many reasons it’s a good thing they make me wear the mask,” Clint says, and Bucky thinks back over six boring goddamn weeks and takes in a steadying breath. 

“I dunno,” he says, “I could stand to see it a little less.” 

And the way Clint’s face falls, that’s why he usually leaves all the talking to Steve. 

 

 


	119. Chapter 119

“Well this is… kind of adorable,” Tony said, carefully taking a wooden stake between metal fingers and visibly working not to accidentally snap it in two. Bucky ignored him and pulled out a hip flask of holy water, which he shoved in Sam’s direction. 

“Thanks, man,” Sam said, but Steve gave the garland of garlic a dubious look. 

“No, seriously, I love that you’ve - wait.” Tony’s slow spreading smile was audible even through the mask’s filters. “Wait, no, tell me you’ve got werewolf repellent too, tell me there are silver bullets in that -” 

“Bite me,” Bucky said, letting his hair fall forward over his face as he rummaged in his duffel bag, and Tony made a high-pitched noise of delight at the  _perfect_ opening. 

“I don’t think it’s me you -” 

“No,” Steve said, flatly. 

“But he -” 

“No.” 

“- so many  _jokes_ -” 

“So far,” Steve said sternly, “Buck’s the only one of us that’s remotely prepared to tackle this threat, so how about you quit making jokes and start working out how we’re going to take down  _Dracula_.” 

Clint sidled up to where Bucky was crouched, taking a crucifix and tucking it absently into his belt. Bucky handed him a stake, too, but he figured that Clint’d be okay if he had a couple wooden-shafted arrows alongside all the carbon fibre in there. 

“Um,” said Clint, and Bucky flicked his hair out of his face and looked up at him, up at the kinda conflicted expression on his face. 

“Somethin’ I can help you with?” 

“I just.” Clint cleared his throat, pink climbin’ up into his cheeks. Good thing he was gonna be at a distance from the fight, ‘cos Clint was looking like prime vampire chow. “The whole Van Helsing thing,” he said, and bit down on his lower lip. 

“You’re gonna make fun?” Bucky said. “‘cos I can take that stake back -” 

“No, no,” Clint said, “no, it’s - not to make things awkward but it is hot as  _fuck_  and if you ever wanted to - I mean, I’m pretty sure I can get hold of some plastic fangs, so -” 

“We get outta this alive,” Bucky said, “you can suck anythin’ of mine you want.” 


	120. Chapter 120

Clint gaped down at him, his hair a haystack from the pillows, the purple yoga pants Kate had gotten him dipping sinfully low on his hips. Bucky shifted his weight, ‘cos the whole down on one knee thing only worked comfortably for so long, and the length of Clint’s pondering was enough to make anyone’s glutes a pain in the ass.

“But -“ Clint said, and Bucky just couldn’t think of any goddamn good things that started with that word. He sighed and shifted to sit cross-legged, leaving the box open in his hand ‘Cos Clint couldn’t seem to stop staring at the ring.

“It’s okay if the answer’s ‘not yet’,” Bucky said. He shrugged and stared at Lucky’s tooth marks on the base of the bed. “At this point it’s more a kind of statement of intent.”

“But -“

“And if the answer’s no -“ Bucky bit his lip.

“No!”

Clint all but yelled it, and the snap as the ring box shut fell into the silence right after like a slamming door.

“Well shit,” Bucky said, and tried for a smile.

Clint scrambled off the bed and practically fell into his lap, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s hunched shoulders and squeezing him tight, muttering things about idiots and assholes in between the kisses he was peppering across Bucky’s face.

“Gettin’ mixed signals here,” Bucky said, but it was stretched a little out of shape around his smile, and Clint’s thumb found the corner of it when he cupped Bucky’s face.

“I didn’t realise,” Clint said, and he was smiling too, all wide and dumb-looking. “I figured I was always more of a - I dunno, a placeholder. Kind of a way station, you know?”

“Fuck, you’re an idiot,” Bucky told him, opening the ring box again like an opportunity, like a promise. “It’s always been you.”


	121. Chapter 121

Obviously they’d talked about telling Steve.

Bucky has some reservations, and honestly Clint could see where he was coming from; Steve wasn’t likely to be homophobic, in the abstract, but his best friend might make him a little uncomfortable. Plus, the shovel talk, from Captain America? Clint was fine with putting that off as long as Bucky was comfortable. Maybe a couple days after that.

Not to mention the sneaking around was kinda hot, in a teenage makeouts kinda way. Sure, Clint was looking to be waking up with Bucky sometime, wanted to get real intimate with the way he looked in the mornings, but he figured he had time for that.

He hadn’t mentioned, or anything, but he was pretty sure this was a lifetime kinda deal.

They’d talked about it, though, how best to do it, so forgive him if he’d expected a little warning. More than just a ‘hey, asshole!’, Winter Soldier bearing down on him, grime and bruises highlighting the glower on his face.

Bucky kisses like he fights. Full on. Rough and ready. A goddamn knock out. Clint’s too busy pressing himself closer, snatching at air, to think so much about Steve standing next to him. The shield hits the floor with a hell of a clang, though, and we who are about to die, he thinks, know every second was worth it.


	122. Chapter 122

Bucky tips his head back against the rough stone wall, the ruthless countdown still running in his head. He’s made his peace with it. He’s made as much peace as he’s got the pieces for. (It isn’t something he ever thought he’d get the chance to rest in, anyway.)

This hadn’t been the plan. That’s mostly ‘cos Nat’s not here, and nobody else plans like they do; nobody else seems to want to think about 'what happens if there’s only one piece left?’

So no one else had planned for the electromagnetic pulse that’d taken out Tony and Sam. No one had though about what’d happen if Hulk and Thor were somewhere off the back of the puzzle box, out of the picture, missing pieces that shoulda been key. Bucky isn’t a cornerstone like them, he’s more a kinda interchangeable shading of sky, so he’d been the one to head up here, to reposition the explosives. The tower will topple, but the structure should be safe. Good foundations. Like Steve, with the team.

Better to let the explosion burn itself out with nothing but endless blue.

There’s a scraping against the space where a window should be. Bucky doesn’t so much care enough to brace himself, 'cos his head knows exactly how many minutes he’s got left.

“Hey,” Clint says, breathing hard. Bucky blinks at him.

“You need to get out of here,” he says, flat. “You - how the fuck are you even -”

“I’m an archer,” Clint says. “I’m an acrobat. And, if we’re alliterating, you’re an arrogant asshole who’d rather believe he’s gotta save us singlehanded than consider that someone else might do it better.”

“It’s not like I wanted to die,” Bucky says, while Clint clips and ties and buckles, lightning fast, and hooks him up to a zip line he’s somehow created. Offers him a second life with hard eyes and sharp tugs.

“But you accepted it as an option,” Clint says, “which we will have words about, 'cos that ain’t gonna fly.”

“Unlike us,” Bucky says, and Clint grins, wide and solid and a corner he wasn’t expecting, like everything built on this will make sense from here on out.

“Unlike us,” he agrees. “Now kick yourself off, and enjoy the view.”

Bucky laughs. “Of - what? The sky?”

“No two are alike,” Clint says, “and every one of 'em’s beautiful,” and Bucky can’t help smiling as Clint shoves him off into the endless blue.

 

 


	123. Chapter 123

At this point, Clint’s dick is all over the internet. 

He’s not, like, porn-famous. He’s got his regular viewers, and he makes enough that he can work part time at the range more for the fun than the money, and still support himself in the style to which he’s accustomed, but it’s not like he’s a household name. If there’s such a thing as a household dick, though, Clint’s dick is it. 

What he’s saying is, somehow Clint’s dick became a meme. 

It’s, y’know, it’s good. It’s a little odd, maybe, being ambushed by his dick while browsing for cat videos, screaming purple text making jokes about - Clint doesn’t even know, at this point. Somehow the meme is layers deep, and Clint ain’t an archaeologist. He doesn’t have time to get out his little brush and carefully document how, from someone one time saying his dick looks like it has a good sense of humour, they got  _here_. 

He likes it, though. The notoriety. The convoluted routes people go down to find the guy who belongs to the dick. The occasional surge in followers on his channel, on his snapchat, when someone somewhere is a little loose lipped. 

(One time, no lie, he got recommended by  _Tony Stark_. That was a good fuckin’ month.)

“You don’t think I’m a little too old for this shit?” he says, arching his back a little into it, half an eye on the scroll of comments while he lets the other one slide closed. This plug is his favourite, presses exactly what he needs it to inside him if he rocks his weight just right. 

There’s the usual outpouring of filth, comments about his dick, his abs, his arms; one guy calls him daddy, which Clint has to work hard at to suppress his snort. Then:

 **Asset**  followed by a long string of numbers that Clint’s never managed to remember:  ** _You’re fucking beautiful. You know that._**

See, this is the unbearable tragedy of Clint F. Barton’s goddamn life: he fucks himself on camera for money, his dick is a goddamn meme, and he’s fallen stupid in love with someone whose face he’s never even seen. 

You ever kinda feel like you’re the universe’s punchline? Punching bag. All of the above. 

“You’re too sweet to me,” he says, a little uneven, and whoever’s listening can take it any way they want. He knows who it’s for. 

When he’s done, Clint takes a shower and then wraps himself in his ancient robe, the one that’s worn so soft it’s practically a cloud. He brushes his teeth, watches himself in the mirror, sends a couple snaps to his loyal followers; his freshly washed toys, his ass in the mirror, a stupid unflattering grin on his half-awake face. 

Asset screenshots that last one. 

Aw, heart. No. 


	124. Chapter 124

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of previous ficlet

Bucky kept his hand clenched in his pocket, head ducked low, hood pulled up. Keeping his breathing steady was an act of enormous will, and there was a distinct possibility that he was gonna punch Steve just as soon as he got home. Sure, he was making progress, and sure, the bodega on the corner wasn’t exactly ‘out in public’, but - 

“Aaw futz, man, I am not signing your  _dildo_  in the  _grocery store.”_

Bucky froze, cognitive dissonance - the context for hearing that voice was all wrong, and it took him a second to - 

 _Shit_. 

He rounded the aisle, lurking at the end of it so he could catch a glimpse without being seen. Could catch a look at a guy whose many and varied orgasm faces he was  _intimately_  familiar with, but he’d never seen look so tired. 

Turned out HungGuy69 favoured purple, when he was actually wearing clothes. How about that. 

Bucky made to step back, resigned to having to move to an entirely different state now, resigned to having to get Steve to move with him, ‘cos it turned out his stupid internet porn-crush lived close enough to share a grocery store. He would  _swear_  the guy had a goddamn Iowa Hawkeyes pennant above his bed, he’d thought - 

The guy HungGuy was talking to moved forward a little, kinda  _loomed_. And it wasn’t like HungGuy didn’t look like he could take care of himself; again,  _intimately_   _familiar_  with the guy’s musculature, his biceps, his abs. But he found himself stepping forward anyway, raising his head, squaring his shoulders. 

“Hey!”

They both looked at him, HungGuy looking kinda hopeful, the asshole bugging him looking pissed and impatient and holding a flopping flesh-coloured dildo like it could do some damage. (Respect to the asshole’s ashole, though. It kinda looked like it  _could_.)

“How about we put away the sexual harrassment lawsuit in waiting,” Bucky said, strolling closer, letting the asshole get a real good look at what Steve always called his ‘resting murder face’. “And maybe you could learn to take no for an answer, huh?” 

The asshole looked like he was thinking about squaring up, then he clearly had second thoughts and deflated. 

“You just lost yourself a viewer,” he said, poking HungGuy in the chest with his oversized rod, and stormed away. Bucky glared after him. 

“Uh,” HungGuy said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Thanks, for that. I mean, I coulda handled it, but -” 

“No problem,” Bucky said, shrugging lopsided and ducking his head. “That guy shouldn’t’ve been bothering you.” 

“Lotta people would disagree. I’m guessing you don’t know who I am,” HungGuy said, and Bucky squinted up at him, biting his lip. 

“Should I?” he lied. 


	125. Chapter 125

Clint looks unfairly good, gliding around in zero grav. It’s like he was born to do this, hauling himself around with those criminal goddamn biceps of his, eeling around corners, crossing his legs in mid-air and leaving back like he lives there.

 Bucky gets the weirdest feeling about it. Like Clint’s in his element like this. Like… like somehow Clint makes infinitely more sense in the context of zero-grav, like this is where he can be most himself. 

He’s wearing a grey shirt, tight enough that it clings in the best possible way, and the sleeves of his purple overalls are tied around his waist. The vulnerable arches of his bare feet keep Bucky up at night. 

 In the absence of coffee - well, there kinda is coffee, but it’s weak as shit and tepid at best - in the absence of coffee, Clint has adopted a weird sludgy energy drink, Stark patent pending. He can bounce off the walls literally now. Bucky’s life could be infinitely easier if he could find it more annoying. 

Apparently, he’s the only one that feels that way; there aren’t all that many compartments in this shop, but Steve and Natasha like to squash themselves into whichever Clint’s not in. And Tony? Bucky’s not sure he’s left the captains chair since they launched. Keeps mumbling about star-dates, whatever they are. So Bucky hasn’t got much to do besides watch Clint. 

He watched the guy put his drink to one side, casually, accustomed to the way the universe is just gonna hold it up. 

Bucky thinks about a coffee cup crash in the kitchen. The chagrin on Clint’s face. How surprised he’d looked, for just a moment.

“Hey Clint,” he asked, casual as anything. “You an alien?” Clint blanched white, then immediately flushed right to his ears,making that face that said whatever came out of his mouth next was gonna be a lie. 

 “What?” he said, “No!” he said. 

Bucky arched an eyebrow, silent and judgemental, and Clint deflated. 

“Okay, so not  _exactly_ ,” he said. 

 

 


	126. Chapter 126

Clint was still caught in the musical tide, slowly drifting back into some kinda coherent frame of mind. He was grinning like an idiot, his heart pounding, his fingers twitching with the need to pick up his guitar.

This was what it was all about, fuck, this feeling right here was - no exaggeration - what he lived for. And that he got to - in a small way - be a part of it?

Clint grinned at the security guard, and took the squinting back on the chin - no, he wasn’t that Danny guy from Iron Fist, give it a second, you’ll get it - and made his way backstage, dodging around crew hauling equipment, having a brief moment of transcendent glee when he caught a glimpse of the back of Dum-Dum Duggan’s head.

He was here for bigger fish, though. And that was when he caught sight of them: Steve Rogers grinning and gesticulating wildly, Bucky Barnes handing off his guitar to a stage tech, customary scowl in place and a towel slung around his neck.

“…an asshole,” Bucky was saying, as Clint drew close. “I can’t you’d - of all the fuckin’ options, why’d you pick a support act that I -“

“Clint!” Steve said, beaming wide. Bucky whirled around to look at him, eyes wide for a second before he settled into his customary scowl, his cheeks a little pink.

“Uh,” Clint said. “Hi.”

Sue him - he’d been a fan of the Howling Commandos for years. They were lucky he could untangle his tongue at all.

“We were just talking about -“ Steve started, but startled back with a laugh as Bucky shoved past him as he headed for the dressing rooms.

“Thanks for the opportunity,” Clint said, failing miserably at not watching Bucky go. “I mean, even one of the Howlies liking my music is pretty -“

“Nah, don’t get Bucky wrong,” Steve said, laughing as Clint craned to get one last look at Bucky and almost tripped over his feet. Steve was wearing a mischievous grin that Clint didn’t trust for a second. “Believe me, he’s a fan.”


	127. Chapter 127

Sometimes the libido is an embarrassing thing.

Hawkeye is hot. It’s a fact. Tight body armour, incredible biceps, sculpted ass. No one is disputing. (Well. Occasionally someone is disputing, and Bucky has a couple throwaway YouTube accounts precisely for the occasions when people are Wrong on the internet.)

Clint, though, he somehow doesn’t get listed in the magazines that love to put Sam and Stevie and Stark on their covers. They just somehow don’t seem to roll with that. And Bucky can’t -

They’re going for dinner. Some battered diner with blissful pie. Bucky’s been waiting, favourite jeans and a Henley, and he’s shifting back and forth on his feet ‘Cos this thing between them is new and maybe a little tentative, and he keeps getting these little dumb smiles that he can’t bite down.

And Clint walks in and -

His jeans cling lovingly to his thighs, and he’s wearing a purple check shirt that looks like it’d be soft against Bucky’s fingers. His leather jacket is old and worn and clearly well loved, and one side of the collar is flipped up, unregarded, and Bucky wants to touch Clint’s skin as he tucks it back in place.His hair is rumpled, but deliberate, and he’s smiling, a little nervous, happy in the same idiot way that Bucky can’t stop.

“Okay?” Clint asks, spreading his hands out a little, leaving himself entirely open.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Bucky says, and leans in to meet his grin.


	128. Chapter 128

Bucky sighed, head leaning back against the wall of the elevator, his knees hitched up so carefully so he wouldn’t invade Clint’s space. Clint wished, stupid and desperate and helpless, that he’d be a little more selfish about this. 

“So I guess we’re talking about this,” Bucky said, on an exhale. 

“I’m sorry,” Clint said, and he felt like if he moved even a little, something in his soul was gonna topple over and spill. He tilted his head back too, looked up at the blurred edges of the light panels, couldn’t even breathe right.  _Idiot._

“Yeah,” Bucky said, and he sounded so  _tired_. “Yeah, you said.” 

“I don’t know what -” 

“I want you to say?” Bucky rolled his head so he was looking at Clint. Clint could hear his hair moving against the brushed steel wall, knew exactly how it’d look teased out by static like that. He knew, logically, that he couldn’t  _feel_ Bucky’s eyes on him. “I don’t want you to say anything.” 

Clint didn’t say anything. Took care not to raise his head. 

“You broke my heart.” 

That had him looking. That had him helpless against looking, even when he knew it was gonna fuckin’ hurt. 

“You broke my heart,” Bucky said, a twisted little sister to a smile on his face, “and that was -” 

Bucky flicked his fingers out, dismissive and careless, ‘cos if there weren’t words for it there sure as hell wasn’t a hand gesture, nothing smaller than a universe would do. 

“What gets me,” Bucky said, “is that I don’t think you get why you did. And I wish for both our sakes you’d figure it out.” 

Clint. Breathed. Opened his mouth. 

“I don’t want you to say anything,” Bucky said, pushed himself to his feet as the elevator shuddered and started to move. 


	129. Chapter 129

“I’m just saying,” Steve said, his voice warm across the phone lines. Airwaves, whatever, Bucky hadn’t quite got a handle on how StarkPhones worked yet. “It’s a big step. Just checking you’re sure you’re ready for marriage.”

It’d be easy to be annoyed. It’d be easy to take it personally, to see it as a reference to all the fucked up his brain has managed, over the years. Bucky takes a deep breath and lets it out slow.

“Ha!” Clint yells from the bathroom. “My poop is now solid and I haven’t thrown up in three hours!” He pokes his head out and grins, looking wrung out and pallid and like he could desperately use a shower, but his smile is a stunner. “In your face, less than 24 hours of hurling from garbage pizza, you owe me tacos.”

Bucky could hear Steve laughing down the phone, and he smiled, serene.

“Never been more sure of anything in my life,” he said.


	130. Chapter 130

“You son of -” 

Bucky bites down on his lower lip and then cusses Clint out in Russian, ‘cos the ten-year-old that Phil’s working with on the parallel bars doesn’t deserve to have Bucky expanding her vocabulary just yet. 

“Aaw,” Clint says, his hands firm and implacable, his eyes so sweet, “tell me how you really feel.” 

And Bucky would. He  _would_. He’s been on the verge of it so many times, over beers and coffees and all the unprofessional that’s snuck in around the edges, but he kind of forgets it all when he’s sweating it out here. He glares, miserable and defiant and still just about able to appreciate the shape of Clint’s smile when he gives in and shares it, gives in and helps Bucky lower what’s left of his arm to his side.

“Bad day, huh?” he asks, and Bucky huffs out a couple breaths that stir the hair that’s hanging over his face, trying to blow out the shaking along with ‘em so his voice will be steady when he responds. 

“My imaginary fuckin’  _wrist_  hurts,” he says, and Clint nods. 

“Yeah, it’ll do that,” he says, with that impossible mix of matter-of-fact and sympathetic that they all trade in around here. Bucky lets out another breath, slower and mostly quiet enough for hiding, and Clint puts a warm hand on his shoulder, digs a thumb in just where it’ll do most good. 

It’s probably playing dirty to groan, low in his chest. Too bad Bucky never learned to follow the rules so good - comes of playing stickball with Steve Goddamn Rogers, whose holier than thou always covered up a ruthless bastard who’d do anything to win. 

Clint licks his lip, gives him look that he gets sometimes when Bucky’s talking too low for his hearing aids, won’t let him read his lips; the look that says you’re cheating, being unfair. Bucky’s fine with that. 

“First fitting with Stark tomorrow,” Clint says. Bucky leans forward until his forehead is resting against Clint’s shoulder, his strong fingers working where Bucky’s arm used to be. So many edges Bucky’s sneaking around here, so many borders he shouldn’t cross. 

“So maybe I work with Tasha to learn how to use it,” Bucky says, low and husky, Clint shivering where the warmth of his breath hits his skin. 


	131. Chapter 131

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to the previous.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Clint has read things wrong. He’d like you to believe that the disaster that is his romantic life isn’t reflected pretty much everywhere else, but he’s not sure he’s got much of a hope of it. He’s good at his job, at least? He’s certain of that.

 

Clint guides Mrs Rodriguez out the door, accepts the hand clasp from her gently crumpled hands. He always schedules her for his last appointment, just before he closes up and takes the long walk home; sometimes she brings him cookies that are still just about warm. Plus, she swears like a sailor.

 

At this point he’s pretty much quit with hoping - six months is more of a baseball bat to the head than a clue - so it takes him a second for the familiar silhouette to sink in. And it’s *not* familiar, not at all what he’s used to, ‘Cos he’s never once met Bucky Barnes with two goddamn arms.

 

Clint opens his mouth - to say… something, he’s not even sure what it’d be - but he’s left helpless and gasping when Bucky slides right in and devours his mouth, thumb hooked into his belt loop and ridged metal curled gentle around his cheek.

 

He can’t quit smiling. It’s been a while.

 

When Bucky pulls away - returns, twice, like he can’t help it - Clint takes hold of his hand and doesn’t look up, too fascinated by the rotation of his wrist joint, the way his fingers articulate.

 

“Hey,” Bucky says, wearing his smile on his face and his voice and the curl of his fingers, “my eyes are up here, pal.”


	132. Chapter 132

Bucky likes flowers better than he likes people, and honestly he doesn’t like flowers all that much. Steve’s of the opinion that talking to the plants makes them grow better; Bucky threatens them in Russian until they’re too terrified to be anything but perfect. 

A general disdain for movies goes along with the misanthropic tendencies - unless they’re played on the SyFy channel in the antisocial hours of the morning - so he honestly hadn’t understood why Steve had insisted on calling Bucky’s flower shop ‘Florist Grump’. If one more customer comes in and says something about a box of chocolates, though, Bucky’s gonna shove an aspidistra where it’ll never photosynthesise again. 

It’s not so much a flower day, today. People buy flowers when it’s beautiful outside, when the sun is shining and the summer dresses are out. It’s the kind of day where their revenue comes from the internet, instead, and Bucky doesn’t have to listen to anything but the spattering of rain against the shop window and the gentle murmur of the radio. 

The bell above the shop door gently rings. 

“Now what?” Bucky says, and yeah, he has moments of gratitude to Steve and his fondness for terrible puns; he can act however the hell he wants and people somehow assume brand loyalty. 

“Hey,” Clint says, dripping miserably on the ‘leave mud here’ mat that Bucky hates with every fibre of his being. He’s not sure when he learned Clint’s name - he’s not sure when it became important - but he resents that, too. People so exactly goddamn tailored to  _precisely_  Bucky’s type really shouldn’t be buying flowers for anyone else; they certainly shouldn’t be rubbing his goddamn face in it. 

Bucky grabs a dish towel from the back room and throws it at Clint’s head, tries to ignore how he looks like a startled hedgehog when he rubs it over his hair. 

“More roses?” Bucky asks, as close to polite as he can manage it, which for some odd reason makes Clint kinda flinch. 

“I’ve been informed,” Clint says, shifting his weight ‘til his sneakers squelch, “that I should tell you that those were for my ex-wife, who’s in hospital.” 

Bucky folds his arms across his chest. Looks at him flatly. 

“I’ve been informed that I should tell you that the daisies last week were for this kid I’m kinda mentoring, and that the tulips were for my best friend Natasha, and the Venus Fly Trap was for my scary, scary boss, and the cactus was for this engineer guy I know, and my wallet is suffering a little here ‘cos mostly all of them were excuses to come see you.” 

Bucky scowls deeper, in the hopes that it’ll somehow conceal the pink that’s steadily coloring his cheeks. 

“Not dates, then,” he says, and somehow something in his tone has given him away, ‘cos Clint’s got a slow-growing smile that threatens the structural integrity of all the walls that Bucky’s patiently built. 

“Not yet,” he says, sunshine blond and sky blue and smiling bright and warm like the perfect time for buying flowers. 


	133. Chapter 133

Bucky’s scowl was fuckin’ ferocious, but his hands were incongruously gentle as he adjusted Clint’s pillows, stole one from every other room so he could prop Clint just exactly right. 

“You’re an idiot,” he said, fingers ringed around Clint’s wrist just below the rope-burn, carefully away from the missing nails on his left hand. 

Clint smiled painfully, lopsided, blinking up at Bucky muzzily from behind a rose-tinted morphine filter. 

“Couldn’t let them have you,” he fumbled out through clumsy lips, patting at Bucky’s hands. He looked horribly pale and washed out against the infirmary’s sheets; he’d look better against his own faded purple, if only they wouldn’t match his bruises so well. 

“I coulda taken it,” he said.

“No,” Clint said, his mouth turning down, tragedy-mask of a drugged up buffoon, “no no they’da messed you up. Taken  _you_. Nightmare dentist.” 

“What?”

“ _Chair_. Nightmare dentist chair. No.” 

Bucky felt, abruptly and horrifyingly and icily cold, like he was going to be sick. 

“They put you in it?” His voice echoed in his ears, hollow. Distant. Like someone in another empty room. “You let them take you so they wouldn’t -” 

“Costco cut-rate Winter Soldier,” Clint said, smiling up at the ceiling like he wasn’t tearing out Bucky’s heart. “Budget assassin, buy one get one free.” 

“Don’t,” Bucky said, and he wasn’t sure he remembered moving and he wasn’t sure he’d ever move again, arched over Clint so their foreheads were pressed together, so the only thing in the world he could see was this battered idiot with his idiot grin. “Please don’t fuckin’ save me, Clint, I don’t think I could bear it.” 


	134. Chapter 134

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel to the one where Clint manages to miss his own wedding due to a hostage situation...

“What’re their demands?”

Lainey span her seat around, pissed off beyond all measure that yet another asshole was trying to take over her job.

“Look,” she said, keeping a tight rein on her temper, ‘Cos when you were a woman in this profession you could only screw that up once. “If you’d just -“

She stopped, confused. Murder glare, sure; she hadn’t been expecting boutonnières.

“I’m sorry, miss,” an earnest-looking blond said, the ridiculous angle of his jaw somehow familiar. “Bucky’s -“

“Holy shit,” she said helplessly, “you’re Captain America!”

The brunet - who by process of elimination had to be the Winter Soldier, and boy was she glad she hadn’t ripped him a new one - tipped his head back and let out a long slow breath, visibly struggling to stay calm.

“Have you got communication with anyone in the bank?” He asked, his voice low and even.

“Yeah,” she said, “they’ve got an Avenger in there,” she winced, “which obviously you guys know. He was all John McClane for a while there.”

They both blinked at her blankly.

“Er. Hiding? In the vents. They caught him when he broke into some guy’s office and tried to look up the phone number for City Hall.” She smiled a little, friendly. “I mean, most people would’ve gone with the police, but -“

There was a crackling from the radio that stood on Lainey’s desk, and before she could grab it it was wrapped in metal fingers and yanked us to the Soldier’s mouth.

“Hey Lainey?”

“Try again,” he said, through gritted teeth.

“Aaw, Buck?” There was indistinct murmuring in the background, then, “yeah, okay, I’ll tell ‘em, just let me - Bucky, you mad?”

“The only reason I ain’t gonna kill you,” the Soldier said, “is ‘Cos I was anticipating a little longer ‘til ‘death do us part’.”

 

 


	135. Chapter 135

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prequel to the previous

“I really don’t know why you’re surprised by this,” Natasha drawled, checking that the gun she apparently kept in her cleavage was loaded. “Since you guys got  _engaged_  in a hostage situation, and all.” 

Bucky didn’t visibly react. Steve blinked and opened his mouth, looking, for a moment, confused. 

“Wait,” he said, “I thought - Bucky said Clint took him to a nice restaurant, bought him dinner, went down on one knee -”

The ensuing silence was tinged the gentle pink of humiliation. Tony leaned forward and patted Steve on the shoulder. 

“It’s sweet that  _you_  believed that,” he said. 

“So when -” 

Bucky slammed his head against the back of his seat, teeth gritted and silver fist clenched. 

“Calm,” Sam said from the driving seat. “I am getting us there as fast as I legally can -” 

“And that’s your problem, right there,” Tony said. “I maintain that I should be driving.” 

“And I maintain that I’ve seen you drive, Tony,” Bruce said, “and your driving makes me angry.” 

“Fair point,” Tony said, “well made.” 

“Hostage situation?” Steve said plaintively. 

Natasha opened her mouth to enlighten him, but Bucky cut in before she could. 

“Circus of Crime,” he said, gritting it out between his teeth. He took a deep breath - in through the nose, out through the mouth - and his next words came a little easier. “Maybe six months after we started -” 

He waved an illustrative hand. 

“Besmirching my surfaces,” Tony put in helpfully. 

“ _Tony,”_ Steve said, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Look, there are very few occasions in my life when I’m gonna get to use the word besmirch,” Tony said. “Let me have this.” 

“Wasn’t Clint unconscious for practically all of that fight?” Sam asked, turning sharply into a side street to avoid the traffic ahead. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, the corner of his mouth rucking up into a little smile, like his fondest memories involved Clint with some kind of head wound; to be fair, the better part of ‘em probably did. “He woke up just long enough to ask me ‘Barnes-Barton, or Barton-Barnes?’, and then he threw up on a clown.” 

“And then,” Natasha continued, amusement woven into her words, “you convinced him that you’d been married three years, when he woke up. The headed stationery was a particularly nice touch.” 

“We’re here,” Sam said, and the laughter immediately died. 


	136. Chapter 136

Bucky got through the reception with clenched fists and gritted teeth, baring enough of them that it’d just about pass for a smile. He stayed long enough to dance with the Wakandan ambassador, to talk about Sokovia’s construction programs, to make eye contact with Steve and communicate exactly how much he owed Bucky, right now. Just as soon as he could manage it he slipped away, climbing all the stairs he’d found so far and bursting out onto a tiny balcony, breathing in like he was dying. 

“Fuck,” he said, and then a little louder, “fuck  _off_.” 

Clint - who hadn’t even come out after him, who’d been there  _waiting -_ shifted his weight on the balustrade enough that his features just caught the edges of the light. 

“Pretty sure Steve would kill me,” he said, and even just at the edges, Bucky couldn’t deal with his smile. He turned to lean and look out over the lawns, breathing deep and counting through the inhales, exhales, tried not to think about how Clint used to count along too. 

“Pretty sure Steve’s not allowed to kill you,” Bucky said after a moment, hanging his head and feeling his shoulders untangle a couple of the tighter knots. 

“I dunno,” Clint said lightly, “he  _is_  the president, now. And he’s got more reason than most everyone, except maybe Tasha.” And, lower - “except maybe you.” 

“Why’d it have to be you?” Bucky asked rhetorically. Fuck, of course it had to be, of course it was gonna be Clint, he was the best bodyguard this side of Europe, except maybe Tasha, and Steve’d taken her for his team. No matter what Bucky wanted. No matter that there was something deeply fucked about expecting his ex-husband to watch his back. 

“Guess I just can’t stay away from you,” Clint said. 


	137. Chapter 137

Planes have been cross-stitching the sky all morning until it looks like it’s carrying scars, and Clint suddenly, fiercely misses his farm. He misses the sea-side sussurus of wind through corn - long grass, now, admittedly, but he can make his way back. He misses the stars and the fireflies, how somehow without New York’s acid white light out there it’s a little brighter.

“You got plans for when you retire?” He asks, and Bucky laughs and kicks at rooftop gravel.

“Don’t think I’ll make it old enough,” he says. “Don’t know if I *can*.”

“Retirement’s more a state of mind,” Clint says sagely.

“You’d know, old man,” Bucky says, and there’s an argument there just waiting, a familiar pattern they can fall into like breathing, and that’s enough. It waiting there, unsaid, is enough.

Clint looks up at cat-scratch contrails and lets out a long breath that forms curling clouds in the morning light.

“You’ll always be welcome, when I go,” he says.

“Gonna teach me to drive a tractor?” Bucky asks, and he’s doing the irony smiling he does when he doesn’t trust enough to admit what he wants.

“Gonna teach you to build a home,” Clint says.


	138. Chapter 138

“Okay, first,” the man said, mask still hanging around his neck from unevenly loosened ribbons, “I resent the term ‘street rat’. I’m ‘alternatively employed’.” 

“You work for the  _circus,”_  James couldn’t help the sneer; he’d been trained into it. Sometimes felt like he’d been born to it, too, because the wooden room, the rickety furniture, Steve coughing by the fire - it all felt far enough away to almost be a dream. 

“Key word being  _work.”_ His mouth - his well-shaped, stubborn mouth, which had been recognisable under the poorly caricatured hawk-mask no matter how hard James had tried to forget - curled into a smirk. “Tell me, highness, what exactly is it  _you_  do?” 

“I -”

James waved at people. He waved at people, and he cut ribbons, and he kissed babies, and he tried with every fibre of his being to forget all the things  _Bucky_ had wanted to do with this power. Tried to forget how disappointed Steve would be with who he’d allowed them to shape him into. 

“I could have the guards here in a moment,” James said, instead. Chose to attribute the miserable flush of hot anger to the man in front of him, or at least some sort of rush of heat. 

“Then call them.” The man made no pretence that he was looking anywhere but at James’ lips. James couldn’t help but lick them. 

“I’m a prince,” he said, a little helpless, a little just to occupy his mouth with anything that wasn’t - that wasn’t - “I can’t -”

“You told me your name was Bucky,” the man said, looking up to meet his eyes, his own dark and fathomless in the balcony’s bare light. “Pretty sure  _Bucky_  can do whatever the hell he likes.” 

 

 


	139. Chapter 139

“Barn, Barn, Barney!”

Clint drummed a beat on the splintered wooden counter, stuck his thumb in his mouth to chew out the sliver of wood, too much of a habit to stop for anything like sense.

“What?”

His brother was hungover again, miserably squinting against the daylight, scowling at the beaming smile that was cracking Clint’s zombie makeup, it was so wide.

“You gotta give me his number,” Clint said, practically hitching himself over the counter, practically crowding into Barney’s space to give the puppy eyes best opportunity to work. “You gotta - I swear to god I’m in love, Barney, I -“

“The fuck you talking about?”

“Baaaarney,” Clint whined, prostrating himself across the wooden plank and throwing an arm across his eyes. “I swear to god he is the most beautiful goddamn thing I ever -“

“Keep it in your goddamn pants,” Barney growled, his voice taking on that edge that Clint had learned to be wary of, that suggested he was getting tired of Clint’s ‘pansy-ass shit’.

“Sorry,” Clint said, cowed, and slithered off the counter. “I just - this once, Barn? Be a pal.”

“Still don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about,” Barney said, grabbing a beer from the cooler next to his feet, twisting the cap off with an easy, familiar motion.

“The new guy,” Clint said, “the -“ he waved an illistrative hand at the haunted house behind them. “The guy all dressed up like World War 2, with the missing arm and all the fake blood and the dress uniform. The hell did you get that, anyway, since when did we have the kinda budget -“

“Clint.”

“I’m not complaining I swear, he’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw, but -“

“*Clint*.”

“- seriously, Barn, his eyes were -“

“Clint, for fuck’s sake, there is no goddamn new guy!”


	140. Chapter 140

There was another clatter, and Steve fished in Bucky’s pumpkin and squinted at it in the pumpkin-orange street lamp light. 

“Be mine,” he deciphered, and Bucky huffed out something a little like a laugh and draped himself backwards along the knee-high wall that surrounded the Hendersons’ yard. 

“Why Steven,” he said, “I thought you’d never ask.” 

“Gross,” Steve said, thoughtfully. On reflection, Bucky agreed. “Mind if I -?” 

Bucky flapped a hand - he’d got sick of the Sweetarts after the first dozen had mingled queasily with the fizz of hope in his stomach. Now he was just getting pissed. 

“You know -” Steve said quietly, barely moving his lips, “you know who it is, right?” 

“Who else has that goddamn aim?” Bucky asked. He hitched up a knee, picked at the ragged edges of the hole in his jeans. “But if he’s not gonna -” He let out an impatient breath, sat up and then shoved himself to his feet, ducking his head so that his hair fell forward across his face. “I didn’t want him to be fucking with me,” he said quietly, and Steve curled a hand around his elbow, nudged their shoulders together. 

“He still might -” 

“You should get back to the party,” Bucky said, shaking him off. “Natasha’s probably waiting on you.” Steve’s torn expression was a little hilarious, and Bucky snorted and shoved him away. “Go on, I should pick up Becca anyway.” 

“Alright,” Steve said, jogging backwards, “but you call me if you need someone to whine at.” 

Bucky flipped him off, Steve’s laugh echoing around him, and then turned, his shoulders hunched, to head for Becca’s friend’s house. There was another rattling clatter and he considered hurling his plastic pumpkin into the Carlsons’ pond. 

 _Kiss me_ , it said. 

“I would’ve, if you’d fuckin’ come close enough, asshole,” he said, making sure his hair was tucked behind his ears, making sure the Hallowe’en light was full on his face. 

There was a rustle from the Djanoglys’ trees; a solid thump. 

“Hi,” Clint said from the shadows, his voice tangled up in as many nervous knots as Bucky’s gut. 


	141. Chapter 141

“No.”

Clint’s been working his way to breathing like he’s awake for ten minutes now, and Bucky has figured that was enough; Clint, apparently, disagrees.

Bucky’s broken through the toughest restraints, punched through concrete and steel, ripped a steering wheel out of a car, but apparently two fingers brushed just against the small of his back are enough to hold him down.

Clint rolls into his back, hiss of his shirt against the sheets, staring up at the ceiling. Bucky agreed - it’s easier like that. Doesn’t feel so much like an admission.

“Thanks,” Clint tells the recessed light fitting, just above his head. Bucky shrugs the shoulder he’s not lying on.

“Any time.”

It’s stupid, how intimate things sound when you’re curled up under a comforter. It’s stupid, how much Bucky wants him to take it up on it.

It hadn’t been much, but things don’t have to be much when they’re - when they’re your thing. When they touch a nerve just wrong, and the time between *now* and *then* snaps into nothing like over-stretched elastic.

The guy had reached out with his knife, touched the centre of Clint’s chest, and something in the guy had frozen over and gone cold. They’d still had Natalia at gunpoint but that hadn’t stopped him. It had been - impressive. Efficient. Silent. It had made Bucky, if he’s honest, feel a little sick.

Clint, too, apparently, ‘Cos by the time he got back to the tower the guy hadn’t been able to stop shaking. He hid it well enough, managed to smile and make jokes. If Bucky hadn’t been used to watching him so close -

He’d followed at his heels to his door. Had let him bitch and scowl and feed him cold-curled pizza. Had followed him into the bedroom and silently insisted there was no way he was gonna leave.

Tried not to spend the sleepless hours - easing closer and touching gently until Clint’s whimpers turned back to snores - desperately hoping for this to happen again.


	142. Chapter 142

Bucky shuffles his feet nervously, kicking at the worn lines painted onto the concrete, tracing the outline of an oil spillage with the tip of his toe. He should go inside - he’s been standing here for ten minutes like some kinda creeper, and the sky is clenching its metaphorical fists and threatening rain. 

Thing is, he’s scared, and he feels a little sick, and he’s angry, and he’s  _nervous_ , and they’re all so tightly interwoven that he’s having some trouble working out what in hell he’s supposed to feel. 

The sick and angry is a little easier, maybe. That one he’s talked to his therapist about. Picking up his car today is another in a long line of moments of acceptance, another internalisation of the fact that yeah, his arm is gone, but also that now he’s gonna have to make changes and accommodations for that. Accepting that he’s not just missing an arm, he’s  _disabled_ , mostly by the concessions that people forget to make. 

Fuck. 

Bucky runs the hand he’s got left through his hair, lets out a huff of breath, and decides that the other side of it - the scared, and the nervous, because this is  _Barton_  & Sons’ Auto - can’t be enough to stop him. If he’s gonna get some of his independence back, if he’s gonna do something other than sit in his college dorm room and hate his life, he’s gonna have to pick up his modified car. The complicated feelings he’s got about Clint Barton’s face, about the grin he’d been wearing when he’d suggested him and his dad could do the work, they’re gonna have to be pushed to one side. 

Bucky takes a step forward and freezes on the threshold, taken off guard by the sight of Clint in a white tank smeared with oil and sweat, his biceps beautifully outlined as he tightens something on the car above his head. 

“What’re you staring at, fairy?” an aggressive voice calls, and Clint’s eyes snap to Bucky’s and then away, one of them ringed with faded purple. 

“Leave him, Barney,” Clint says. “Just a kid from school.”


	143. Chapter 143

One time Clint’d befriended a stray cat. 

It was this ugly, mangy thing, went through the dumpsters out back of the line of food stalls, and it’d honestly taken Clint a while to decide firmly on  _cat_  rather than possum or, like, nightmare eldritch hell-beast. That was actually the name he called it in his head, although over time it shortened to Ellie. 

They were wintering in Phoenix, ‘cos Carson hated the damn cold, and every year there was still something kinda novel about being somewhere longer than a couple weeks. Barney usually found some girl to hook up with, stay with, convince he’d stick around. Clint didn’t mind having the trailer to himself. But he figured if he had Ellie installed when Barney got back there was a chance he’d get to keep her, right?

It was a dumb idea, but it kept him happy for a while. 

Ellie hadn’t had a good life, that much was pretty obvious. She was covered in scars and matted hair, peered at the world lop-sided with only one unclouded eye. She hated Clint at first,  _hated_  him, and years later he still carries a couple of her scars. 

First time she walked up to him of her own volition he nearly goddamn cried. 

See, the key to it all was patience. Letting her get used to him at her own pace. Living his life without making her the focus of it, but making space for her when she asked for it. He spent more hours sitting amongst trash than he’d like to think about, and picked up fleas, and a weird kind of infection that Madame Esmerelda had driven him to the hospital for. And he’d held still, and breathed slow; learned to read her body language and went with every signal she gave him. 

It worked, too. Sure, he didn’t get to keep her, ‘cos on reflection he was about the worst person in the world to be trusted with another life, except maybe Barney. But he got her used enough to him that he could take her to a shelter before they left in the spring, maybe socialised her enough that she could find a home, some day. Sure, he kinda loved her, and leaving her behind kinda broke his heart, but it honestly wasn’t  _about_  that. Wasn’t about  _him._

So yeah, Clint knows how to deal with Bucky. Knows better than Steve, maybe, about reading his signals and letting him approach at his own pace. Making space for him, in case he wants it. 

Never mind that he’s hoping with every last beat of his heart that he does. 

 

 


	144. Chapter 144

Es had fallen asleep barely two houses in, but Clint had spent entirely too long on her costume to give up that soon. Those hours learning to sew at the circus, back when he’d had to maintain his own costume, weren’t gonna go to waste. 

Also candy. There wasn’t nearly enough of that, yet. 

They trudged up the path to the next front door, a rainbow parade of dancing skeletons welcoming them in. Bucky rapped on the door and then took a step back, and don’t think Clint didn’t notice how he brushed against Clint just enough to nudge him back, too. He rolled his eyes and stroked down the outside of Bucky’s hand, ‘cos the protective streak was adorable and annoying in just about equal measure. 

The door creaked open to reveal two women dressed as Morticia and Gomez Addams, who instantly dropped the in-character expressions to coo over Es and her four extra tiny limbs. 

“Oh, she’s a tiny  _Black WIdow_ ,” one cooed, “oh that’s so  _precious!”_

The other, Morticia, eyed Clint up and down thoughtfully. 

“You’re - let me guess -” 

Clint thought he’d done a pretty good job. Sure, the dragon on his chest was covered by Es’s sling, but the winged eyeliner on his yellow bandanna was on point. (Danny was a weird kinda guy.)

“You’re Hawkeye!” she announced finally, pleased with herself, and Clint sighed as Bucky sniggered behind him. 

“Sure,” Clint said. “Fine. I’m Hawkeye.” 


	145. Chapter 145

“These are not the kinda childhood memories a guy wants to relive!” Clint yelled, but the fibreglass vampire whose screaming mouth formed the open door didn’t make any response. 

“Is there any of your childhood you  _do_  want to relive?” Natasha asked, with the bemused sort of interest she displayed when any sort of childhood, family type issue came up. 

“I dunno,” Clint said, “I could eat a lot more without indigestion, back then.” 

“Call it, Hawkeye,” Steve said, and Clint squared his shoulders, not sure entirely that he deserved that level of trust. It was his fault that the Ringmaster was here, after all.

“Provided nothing’s changed since the last time I was working with him - which is a fair assumption, with the Ringmaster - splitting up inside isn’t gonna work. It funnels you through, keeps you on the track, and whatever they’ve got planned along that path anything outside of it’ll be worse. I’d recommend us entering in pairs at five minute intervals, keeping an eye out for traps in the coffin room, Laughing Annie’s hallway, and the mirror maze. The Ringmaster’s gonna have eyes on us at all times, so any confrontation’ll come when he thinks he has the advantage; feel free to go with the jump scares to your heart’s content.” He faltered a little when he saw the serious nods - how the hell would he ever get over anything going wrong because of  _his_  orders? - but the expression on Bucky’s face made up for a lot. 

“Bucky and I’ll go first,” Clint said. “Wanda and Tony come after us, with Widow and Cap bringing up the rear. Sam, Vision, I want you guys keeping look out on high. Take down anything that tries to follow us in.” 

“I ever tell you,” Bucky murmured, hot breath against the back of Clint’s neck, “how fuckin’ hot you are when you take charge?” 

“Tell me again when we’re not about to be murdered by skeletons,” Clint said, bringing up his bow and charging in. 


	146. Chapter 146

Turns out you can buy a genuine WWII Bucky Barnes Sniper Coat for $40 on ebay, which is something that, on reflection, Bucky’d rather not know. It’d be nice if there was some kinda limit to the strangeness of his life, some outer boundary at which things would settle down and he could maybe get a dog. Fix a porch. Kick back in a rocking chair. Instead things keep getting weirder, and unfolding a replica of a relic of his life from vacuum packaging is close enough to blowing his mind. 

Kinda made it worth it, though, when he saw Clint’s tiny face light up in a way it hadn’t quite managed since he’d been hit with that blast from whatever the hell kinda gun turned him into a  _kid_. 

Thor, as best as he could tell, figured it’d last maybe a day or two longer. Bucky wasn’t sure what they were gonna do with the little booster cushion Clint sat on every morning, eating bright cereal with his hand in a fist around the spoon. The wariness in his smile had mostly faded, now, and Bucky had had to intervene when he’d found Thor and Hulk playing  _catch_  with him, Clint shrieking with laughter as he hurtled through the air between them, and he’d near enough had a goddamned heart attack. Clint’d gone from being big-eyed and close-mouthed to being the kind of holy terror that Bucky was helpless against. 

Just look at his best friend. 

There were so very many ways this was messing with Bucky’s head. 

This was about Clint, though. This was about the way Clint had gone quiet, every last fibre of him yearning, when someone’d mentioned that Hallowe’en was coming up. This was about the tiny Captain America uniform that Bucky’d found in Target, and the tiny bony hug Clint’d wrapped around his waist, squeezing as hard as his underfed body could. 

So Bucky posed for pictures in a jacket that didn’t fit right, carrying a gun that shot foamy missiles, with the guy he was in love with hanging onto his pants at knee height. 

There were so many things wrong with this,  _so many_ , but what wouldn’t he do to make the guy smile?

 

 


	147. Chapter 147

Clint sneaking out of medical had become enough of a habit that the medical staff tended to just send any prescriptions to his rooms, FAO Mr J. Barnes,  as soon as he was mobile. 

So the nurse just about jumped out of her skin when he cleared his throat and asked politely for some painkillers, please, while they both tried to ignore the shining tracks down his cheeks. 

“But we -” she said, helpless, “we left the door open?” She gaped at him for a moment more, then bustled into action, taking his empty water jug to refill and going to fetch a doctor to issue more pills. 

Clint scrubbed the hand that was currently working across his face, wishing the breath he took in wasn’t so goddamn shaky, and then tried to fish out the remote that’d make his bed lay him down again.

The bed started moving before he’d done more than brace himself to reach for the remote, settling into just the perfect angle, and he covered his face again ‘cos everything,  _everything_  goddamn hurt. 

“Hey,” he croaked, and did his best to pat at the fingers that trailed gently over his cast-wrapped hand. 

“Oh  _sweetheart,”_  Bucky said, and Clint choked on an idiot sob, curled as best as he could into the arms that Bucky wrapped around him as best as  _he_  could. Clint hid his face in Bucky’s hair and hitched in dumb breaths that hurt like hell and smelt like home, and Bucky whispered everything that he needed to hear. 

“I’m sorry,” Clint said, “I’m sorry, I just - can we press pause for a bit? I swear, I swear we’re gonna talk about it, and I’ve probably got an apology to - but can I come home?” 

Bucky reared back, startled,  _appalled_ , and cupped Clint’s face with a hand that was about as unsteady as Clint’s dumb voice. 

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” he said, and pressed kisses to his forehead, the side of his face that wasn’t swollen, the stubbled skin just under his chin. “I don’t give a shit what we’re fightin’ about, Clint, I will never in my life not want you there.” 


	148. Chapter 148

“Uugh.” 

Rain was pattering gently against the window, the gentle whistle of wind easing in around the window frame that he meant to get around to replacing any time, now. 

The bed was some kinda iron-framed rickety monstrosity that he’d found out in the barn, ‘cos Clint had burned his parents’ bed just as soon as he’d been able to hold an axe again. The patchwork quilt, though, had been one Gammy Francis had made, and he’d choked the washing machine to death on it. 

Clint stretched, the springs of the bed clanking out a song that was almost familiar, dragged a little off-key by the additional weight on the poorly-stuffed mattress. 

“So what are your thoughts on taking the day?” Clint asked, awkwardly casual but still uncertain enough to ask the ceiling instead of turning to look at his face. “We could ignore the whole responsibilities bullshit, stay in bed, maybe order some crappy pizza from the only place that’ll deliver here…”

There was silence. Silence but for the gentle pitched whistle, the soft patter, the creak of springs as Clint nervously shifted his weight. 

“Or not,” he said, forcing his voice into a grin that his face didn’t have to bother with, since apparently no one was interested in looking. “Or we could just pretend that none of this ha- erk!”

A cool metal arm had snaked around his waist and yanked him back from where he’d been edging closer to the edge of the bed, tugging him back under the heavy, faded quilt and rolling him onto his back. Bucky braced himself over him, hair forming a curtain between them and the peeling wallpaper, and the lines between his brows were only formed of barely-awake confusion. They were undermined entirely by the tiny smile on his face. 

“Counter-offer,” he said, his voice hoarse and warm in a way that Clint wanted to get familiar with. “We go downstairs, I cook you some eggs, and we curl up on the couch under this blanket while we wait for the functioning goddamn bed you’re gonna order. I keep sleeping on this fuckin’ thing, even  _my_  back’s gonna give out.” 

“You’re staying, then?” Clint asked, hesitant, and Bucky rolled his eyes and collapsed onto him, burying his face in Clint’s neck and crushing him into the goddamn uncomfortable springs. 

 

 


	149. Chapter 149

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heavily inspired by Jordan L. Hawk's Hex series, which is a hugely enjoyable set of queer romance books that I thoroughly recommend.

It hadn’t ever been magic. Clint  _was_  a Familiar - he could turn into a goddamn hawk, it wasn’t like there was any easy way to fake that - but Barney’s part had always been smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand. Catch any bonded witch working for the circus, with the kind of salaries they could pull down outside of it. 

Their act changed depending on the state they were in. Florida, New York, it was a witch and Familiar demonstrating flashy stage magic; Tennessee, Louisiana, Barney Barton and his Amazing Trained Hawk took the stage, and Clint hid in their trailer any time they were outside the ring. 

It was - a life. Clint wouldn’t necessarily call it good. It was better to have the protection of the circus than face life as an unbonded Familiar, risking a force-bonding every time he went outside. It was better than being bonded to some asshole of a witch who only wanted him for the power he could give them. 

Just, he occasionally found himself searching the faces of patrons. Found himself carrying an idiot hope in the hollow place inside his chest. If he could find the one witch that’d best complement him, if he could just find  _his_ - 

“C’mon, Hawkguy,” Barney said, impatient, and Clint sighed and stood, a shiver running through him as he shifted forms, easy as breathing. 

-

Bucky regretted letting Steve talk him into leaving his apartment. There was too much noise, too many people, too much of a crowd with his balance still as messed up as it was. The bright, brash posters for the circus only halfway covered the adverts for the army, all those with witch potential being offered a dazzling future of clean uniforms and a decent pay package; no mention of the dust, and the pain, and the blood. 

“Why’m I here, Stevie?” he asked rhetorically, ‘cos once Steve got an idea in his head there was no prying it out with less than a goddamned crowbar. “Oh,” he said, when he saw where they were heading, “c’mon Steve, no.” 

“Dr Wilson figures you need more exposure to positive examples of bonds,” Steve said. “It was messed up, what they did to you, and I understand that you don’t want -”

“Steve,” Bucky said flatly, “I love you, but you don’t understand shit. There is no way in hell I am ever gonna bond again. Never. Not if the Holy Familiar herself came down in shining robes and begged -” 

Bucky’s voice had maybe got a little loud, and people were staring at him, a complication of expressions on their faces. Disgust at the blasphemy, smug pity for his unbonded state, anger at his derision for the bond. His attention was caught, though, by the scruffy blond guy leaning in the entrance to the tent, whose wide blue eyes were kinda captivating, and filled with inexplicable hurt. 


	150. Chapter 150

Clint tied off Wanda’s fancy mermaid braid with a flourish, and she kissed him on the cheek, her eyes sparkling. Sometimes Clint was reminded like a punch in the gut just how damn  _young_  she was. Made him want to do just about anything to keep that mischief, that teasing about her, ‘cos everyone on this team seemed to get old too damned fast. 

“Okay,” he said, “anyone else?” 

“I can think of someone,” Wanda said, and there was a laugh in her voice that was like fresh water. 

“No,” Bucky said. He was scowling at the TV, to all outward appearances paying not even the slightest attention to the conversation going on around him. Steve said he was sulking - he was so used to healing up instantly that he’d got pretty pissy that having the bones in his leg shattered six ways to Sunday apparently took a little longer to fix itself up. He’d been glowering on the couch all day, avoiding the crutches that were placed solicitously in reach, and he hadn’t let Clint watch even one of his queued episodes of  _Dog Cops_. 

“Aaw, Bucky, you don’t want to be pretty?” Clint said, and Natasha looked over from the kitchen where she was doing something way too complicated with tea leaves and strainers and jelly. 

“Everyone likes to be pretty,” she said, and Bucky screwed his face up into even more of a frown but it was barely a token resistance, so Clint clambered over and perched on the back of the couch. 

“You wanna be Princess Leia?” Clint asked, and Bucky turned around to look up at him. 

“Your dick is within easy reach of my teeth,” he said, a low growl, and Clint almost smacked his knee into the guy’s chin with the reflexive wince at that. 

“Okay, okay,” he said, “so we’ll just go with a couple Viking braids, like Thor, right?” 

He started off brushing, gentle movements through Bucky’s hair, and he could feel Bucky relaxing back against him, no matter how he tried to resist. Clint ran his fingers through, too, separating the hair into sections, gently teasing his calluses against the soft skin behind Bucky’s ear. 

“Gonna make you so pretty,” he crooned, playing it up a little for Wanda’s benefit, secretly meaning every word. “You’re practically purring like a pussy cat, aren’t you? Who knew the Winter Soldier could be taken down so easy?” 

“Shut up and get it over with, Barton,” Bucky said, and the angle they were at, neither Wanda nor Nat could see the way he curled his hand around Clint’s ankle, ran his thumb across the bone there. 

Clint took his time over it. Indulged. Braided and unbraided and braided again, losing himself in the silk of Bucky’s hair against his fingers. Getting away with soft brushes against the skin of Bucky’s neck. 

“There,” he said finally, figuring he couldn’t exactly string it out any more. “Pretty as a goddamn picture.” 

Wanda laughed and snapped a picture. 

“And now you should give him a kiss,” she teased. 

“Oh yeah,” Bucky said, “I’m gonna kiss him alright,” and the tone of his voice was the low growl of a threat, but the look in his eyes was a promise. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ineligible](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16430873) by [Violsva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva)




End file.
